A Breakthrough in Nanotube Transistors

High-current transistors made from perfectly aligned carbon nanotubes show promise for use in flexible and high-speed nanoelectronics.

Controlling the growth of carbon nanotubes over large surface areas is essential for making transistors with sufficient current outputs and consistent properties for use in electronic circuits. In a significant advance toward such nanotube-based electronics, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) have grown rows of perfectly aligned carbon nanotubes on quartz crystal and used these arrays to make transistors. The electrodes in these transistors border the nanotube rows so that thousands of nanotubes bridge the electrodes, increasing the current.

Tube transistors: Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign have developed a technique to grow thousands of carbon nanotubes (shown in blue and white in this colorized scanning electron micrograph). The researchers deposit electrodes (shown in gold) on two sides of the nanotube arrays to create transistors that have hundreds of nanotubes bridging the electrodes. Credit: John Rogers, UIUC In a Nature Nanotechnology paper, the researchers, led by John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at UIUC, have demonstrated transistors made with about 2,000 nanotubes, which can carry currents of one ampere--thousands of times more than the current possible with single nanotubes. The researchers have also developed a technique for transferring the nanotube arrays onto any substrate, including silicon, plastic, and glass. The nanotube transistors could be used in flexible displays and electronic paper. Because carbon nanotubes can carry current at much higher speeds than silicon, the devices could also be used in high-speed radio frequency (RF) communication systems and identification tags. In fact, the research team is working with Northrop Grumman to use the technology in RF communication devices, says Rogers. Until now, making transistors with multiple carbon nanotubes meant depositing electrodes on mesh-like layers of unaligned carbon nanotubes, Rogers says. But since the randomly arranged

carbon nanotubes cross one another, at each crossing, flowing charges face a resistance, which reduces the device current. The perfectly aligned array solves this problem because there are "absolutely no tube-tube overlap junctions," Rogers says. The research team makes the arrays by patterning thin strips of an iron catalyst on quartz crystals and then growing nanometer-wide carbon nanotubes along those strips using conventional carbon vapor deposition. The quartz crystal aligns the nanotubes. Then the researchers can make transistors by depositing source, drain, and gate electrodes using conventional photolithography.

Researchers have not been able to grow well-aligned nanotube arrays until now, according to Robert Hauge, a chemistry professor who studies carbon nanotubes at Rice University. Indeed, "alignment is no longer a showstopper," says Ali Javey, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Making a well-ordered array in which parallel nanotubes are connected between the source and drain electrodes is a big achievement, says Richard Martel, a chemistry professor at the University of Montreal. The new work allows a true comparison between nanotube transistors and silicon transistors because an array of nanotubes gives a planar structure similar to silicon devices, he says. "They did exactly what needed to be done, and it's a significant step." 2. by Kate Melville Nanotube Transistor Created

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Clemson University, writing in Nature Materials, said specially synthesized Y-shaped carbon nanotubes were shown to behave as electronic switches similar to conventional MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) transistors, the key element of modern microprocessors. They added that the carbon nanotube transistors exhibited superior electronic properties compared to the conventional transistors used in modern computers. "This is the first time that a transistor-like structure has been fabricated using a branched carbon nanotube," said researcher Prabhakar Bandaru. "This discovery represents a new way of thinking about nano-electronic devices, and I think people interested in creating functionality at the nanoscale will be inspired to explore the ramifications of these Yjunction elements in greater detail."

The discovery may speed the development of new types of nano-electronic devices, overcoming the fundamental technological and financial limits that existing MOS technologies must soon face. Currently, the size of conventional MOS transistors is around 100 nanometers, and while that can be expected to reduce further in the future, MOS technology is approaching critical limits. The new Y-shaped nanotubes, however, can be made as small as a few nanometers. The nanotube transistors were initially grown as straight nanotube elements. Titanium-modified iron catalyst particles added to the synthesis mixture were then attached to the straight nanotubes, nucleating additional growth, which continued in a fashion similar to branches growing from a tree trunk. The nascent nanotubes assumed a Y-shape with the catalyst particle gradually becoming absorbed at the junction of the stem and two branches. When electrical contacts are attached to the nanotube structures, electrons travel into one arm of the Y, hop onto the catalyst particle, and then hop to the other arm and flow outward. Experiments conducted in Bandaru's lab at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering showed that the movement of electrons through the Y-junction can be finely controlled, or gated, by applying a voltage to the stem, a replication of the function of existing transistors. Bandaru said the phenomenon effectively makes Y-shaped nanotubes the smallest ready-made transistor yet, with rapid switching speeds and possible three-way gating capability. In earlier attempts to make carbon nanotube-based transistors, separate gates were added rather than built in. "We can synthesize functionality at the nanoscale, in this case to include the three elements of a circuit - the gate, source, and drain - and we don't have to go to the trouble of making them separately and assembling them," he explained. Bandaru and his co-researchers now plan to experiment with various other catalyst particles in order to tailor the three-way gating properties of the Y-junctions. "If we can easily fabricate, manipulate, and assemble these nano-devices on a large scale they could become the basis of a new kind of transistor and nanotechnology," Bandaru concluded. 3. Nanotube transistors speed up Apr 30, 2004 Engineers in the US have made the first high-speed transistor from a carbon nanotube. Peter Burke and colleagues at the University of California at Irvine showed that their device which consists of a single-walled carbon nanotube sandwiched between two gold electrodes operates at extremely fast microwave frequencies. The result is an important step in the effort to develop nanoelectronic components that could be used to replace silicon in a range of electronic applications (S Li et al. 2004 Nano Lett. 4 753). The feature sizes in conventional microelectronic circuits are getting smaller and smaller and look set to reach the limit imposed by the fundamental properties of silicon in a decade or so. The semiconducting properties of carbon nanotubes - rolled up sheets of graphite just nanometres in diameter - make them a promising alternative to silicon, and nanotubes have already been used to fabricate a variety of electronic components, including diodes and fieldeffect transistors.

Conventional transistors have three terminals: the source, drain and gate electrodes. The gate controls the electron density in the central region of the transistor, which is usually made of a semiconducting material. If the electron density is high, current flows from the source to the drain. However, current does not flow if the electron density is low. This property allows the transistor to operate as a switch.

high-speed nanotransistor Burke and colleagues made their transistor by sandwiching a semiconducting single-walled nanotube between source and drain electrodes made of gold (see figure). When they varied the gate voltage in the device, they found that the circuit operated at 2.6 gigahertz (2.6 x 109 Hertz). This means that current can be switched on and off in about 0.1 nanoseconds, making it the fastest nanotube transistor made to date. At present, the device only works at 4 kelvin but Burke is confident that it can be made to operate at room temperature. Moreover, he believes that the transistor could be made to switch at even higher frequencies. I estimate that the theoretical speed limit for these transistors should be terahertz (1012 Hertz), he said. This is about 1000 times faster than modern computer speeds. About the author Belle Dum is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb