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Temperature-mediated growth of single-walled carbon-nanotube intramolecular junctions

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Abstract

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess superior electronic and physical properties that make them ideal candidates for making next-generation electronic circuits that break the size limitation of current silicon-based technology1,2,3,4. The first critical step in making a full SWNT electronic circuit is to make SWNT intramolecular junctions in a controlled manner. Although SWNT intramolecular junctions have been grown by several methods2,5,6,7,8, they only grew inadvertently in most cases. Here, we report well-controlled temperature-mediated growth of intramolecular junctions in SWNTs. Specifically, by changing the temperature during growth, we found that SWNTs systematically form intramolecular junctions. This was achieved by a consistent variation in the SWNT diameter and chirality with changing growth temperature even though the catalyst particles remained the same. These findings provide a potential approach for growing SWNT intramolecular junctions at desired locations, sizes and orientations, which are important for making SWNT electronic circuits.

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Figure 1: Intramolecular junctions induced by a change in temperature during CVD.
Figure 2: Six intramolecular junctions were induced by three temperature oscillations between 950 and 880 °C during CVD.
Figure 3: AFM image and electrical properties of an SWNT with an S–S intramolecular junction.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NSFC (20573002, 20673004, 50521201) and MOST (2006CB932701, 2006CB932403).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST), Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China

    Yagang Yao, Jin Zhang, Ran Liu, Liying Jiao & Zhongfan Liu

  2. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA

    Qingwen Li & Yuntian T. Zhu

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  1. Yagang Yao
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  2. Qingwen Li
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  3. Jin Zhang
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  4. Ran Liu
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  5. Liying Jiao
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  6. Yuntian T. Zhu
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  7. Zhongfan Liu
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Correspondence to Jin Zhang or Zhongfan Liu.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary information and figures S1-S6 (PDF 1038 kb)

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Yao, Y., Li, Q., Zhang, J. et al. Temperature-mediated growth of single-walled carbon-nanotube intramolecular junctions. Nature Mater 6, 283–286 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1865

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