Backscattering in carbon nanotubes: Role of quantum interference effects

The backscattering contribution to the conductivity, irrelevant for metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes, is proved to become more significant for doped semiconducting systems, in agreement with experiments. In the case of multiwalled nanotubes, the intershell coupling is further shown to enhance the contribution of backscattering for “metallic” double-walled, whereas it remains insignificant for “metallic/semiconducting” double-walled systems.