Metallic-to-semiconducting nanotube conversion greatly improves transistor performance
Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - 11:30
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org) —Future transistors made of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWNTs) have the potential to perform much better than today's transistors. However, when SWNTs are grown in bulk, only about two-thirds of them are semiconducting, while the other one-third are metallic (m-SWNTs). Since m-SWNTs have a higher conductivity than s-SWNTs, their presence allows current leakage in a transistor's off state, which greatly decreases the transistor's on/off current ratio and overall performance. In a new study, scientists have demonstrated that simply decorating the m-SWNTs with copper oxide nanoparticles can convert them into s-SWNTs, resulting in a 205-fold increase in a transistor's on/off current ratio.