  We investigate electronic transport properties of the squashed armchair
carbon nanotubes, using tight-binding molecular dynamics and Green's function
method. We demonstrate a metal-to-semiconductor transistion while squashing the
nanotubes and a general mechanism for such transistion. It is the distinction
of the two sublattices in the nanotube that opens an energy gap near the Fermi
energy. We show that the transition has to be achieved by a combined effect of
breaking of mirror symmetry and bond formation between the flattened faces in
the squashed nanotubes.
