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Air-stable n-type transistors based on assembled aligned carbon nanotube arrays and their application in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor electronics

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Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are ideal candidates for beyond-silicon nano-electronics because of their high mobility and low-cost processing. Recently, assembled massively aligned CNTs have emerged as an important platform for semiconductor electronics. However, realizing sophisticated complementary nano-electronics has been challenging due to the p-type nature of carbon nanotubes in air. Fabrication of n-type behavior field effect transistors (FETs) based on assembled aligned CNT arrays is needed for advanced CNT electronics. Here in this paper, we report a scalable process to make n-type behavior FETs based on assembled aligned CNT arrays. Air-stable and high-performance n-type behavior CNT FETs are achieved with high yield by combining the atomic layer deposition dielectric and metal contact engineering. We also systematically studied the contribution of metal contacts and atomic layer deposition passivation in determining the transistor polarity. Based on these experimental results, we report the successful demonstration of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor inverters with good performance, which paves the way for realizing the promising future of carbon nanotube nano-electronics.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support from National Science Foundation (NSF) via SNM-IS Award (No. 1727523). A portion of the images and data used in this article were acquired at the Center for Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis, University of Southern California.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, 90089, USA

    Zhen Li, Dingzhou Cui, Mingrui Chen, Zhiyuan Zhao & Chongwu Zhou

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706, USA

    Katherine R. Jinkins & Michael S. Arnold

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  1. Zhen Li
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  2. Katherine R. Jinkins
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  3. Dingzhou Cui
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  4. Mingrui Chen
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  5. Zhiyuan Zhao
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  6. Michael S. Arnold
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  7. Chongwu Zhou
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Correspondence to Chongwu Zhou.

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Air-stable n-type transistors based on assembled aligned carbon nanotube arrays and their application in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor electronics

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Li, Z., Jinkins, K.R., Cui, D. et al. Air-stable n-type transistors based on assembled aligned carbon nanotube arrays and their application in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor electronics. Nano Res. 15, 864–871 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3567-9

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