Rate-selected growth of ultrapure semiconducting carbon nanotube arrays

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising candidates for smart electronic devices. However, it is challenging to mediate their bandgap or chirality from a vapor-liquid-solid growth process. Here, we demonstrate rate-selected semiconducting CNT arrays based on interlocking between the atomic assembly rate and bandgap of CNTs. Rate analysis confirms the Schulz-Flory distribution which leads to various decay rates as length increases in metallic and semiconducting CNTs. Quantitatively, a nearly ten-fold faster decay rate of metallic CNTs leads to a spontaneous purification of the predicted 99.9999% semiconducting CNTs at a length of 154 mm, and the longest CNT can be 650 mm through an optimized reactor. Transistors fabricated on them deliver a high current of 14 μA μm-1 with on/off ratio around 108 and mobility over 4000 cm2 V-1 s-1. Our rate-selected strategy offers more freedom to control the CNT purity in-situ and offers a robust methodology to synthesize perfectly assembled nanotubes over a long scale.

DOI

10.1038/s41467-019-12519-5

Citation

Zhu, Z, Wei, N, Cheng, W, Shen, B, Sun, S, Gao, J, Wen, Q, Zhang, R, Xu, J, Wang, Y & Wei, F 2019, ' Rate-selected growth of ultrapure semiconducting carbon nanotube arrays ', Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1-8 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12519-5

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201911076102

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[article-cris] Perustieteiden korkeakoulu / SCI

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