Effects of environmental and exciton screening in single-walled carbon nanotubes

The ground-state exciton binding energy for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in vacuum calculated ignoring the screening of Coulomb interaction appears to be much greater than the corresponding band gap. The most essential contributions to the screening of electron-hole (e-h) interaction potential in semiconducting SWCNTs, which return the ground-state exciton binding energy into the energy gap, are considered. Our estimates on the screening effects and exciton binding energies are in satisfactory agreement with the corresponding experimental data for concrete nanotubes.