SPATIAL ORIENTATION OF THE CARBON NANOTUBES IN ELECTROPHORETIC DEPOSITION PROCESS

摘要

A new method of electrophoretic nanotube deposition is proposed wherein individual nanotubes are placed on metal electrodes which have their length significantly exceeding their width, while the nanotube length is chosen to be close to that of the metal electrode.;Due to electrostatic attraction of individual nanotube to the elongated electrode, every nanotube approaching the electrode is deposited along the electrode, since such an orientation is energetically favorable.;This method offers opportunity to produce oriented arrays of individual nanotubes, which opens up a new technique for fabrication and mass production of nanotube-based devices and circuits. Several such devices are considered. These are MESFET- and MOSFET-like transistors and CMOS-like voltage inverter.

主权项

1. A method of orienting nanotubes, said method comprising electrophoretically depositing nanotubes on an array of metal electrodes, each metal electrode having a high length-to-width ratio and a width that is substantially less than the length of the nanotubes, so that during the electrophoretic deposition, each electrostatically charged nanotube approaches the nearest said metal electrode having an opposite electrostatic charge and acquires an energetically preferable orientation parallel to the length of said metal electrode, thereby producing a spatially selective placement of the nanotube along said metal electrode.