Thin film transistors using aligned single wall carbon nanotubes for transparent electronics

Abstract

Single wall carbon nanotube (SWNTs) possess exceptional electrical property with many possible application in electronics such as field effect transistors(FETs), sensors, light emitters, logic circuits, and so forth. Single wall carbon nanotubes have been of particular technological significance due to these extraordinary properties. Synthesis of carbon nanotube has been developed for high quality and mass production by various methods in chamber. Althogh SWNTs has a great electrical property; there are a lot of problems to solve in electronics. To fulfill their prospective applications in large scale and in new type of device, the location, orientation and density of SWNTs must be controlled. In recent work, SWNTs can be synthesized commercial production by Arc-discharge method. However they are existed random network and not oriented. This problem cause percolation effect between SWNTs which affect to conductivity and other electrical property. In this work, we suggest the new type of SWNT device by simultaneous growth of SWNTs to solve this problem. The image of this thin film transistor confirmed by SEM and the property of SWNTs is measured by AFM. The device was identified as single wall carbon nanotube which has the diameter of 1.0~1.4nm and the shape of alignment is almost perfectly. The device property is lower than other SWNT device which used to Au or Pd electrode but, full-carbon nanotube device is perfectly transparent (>80%).