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Research Article

Quality metrology of carbon nanotube thin films and its application for carbon nanotube-based electronics

Jie Zhao1,2,§, Lijun Shen3,4,§, Fang Liu1,2, Pan Zhao3,5, Qi Huang1,2, Hua Han3,4, Lianmao Peng1,2, Xuelei Liang1,2( )
Center for Carbon-Based Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Institute of Automation, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin 150080, China

§ Jie Zhao and Lijun Shen contributed equally to this work.

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Abstract

Large area, highly uniform, and density controllable carbon nanotube (CNT) films, either well-aligned or random network, are required for practical application of CNT-based electronics. Mass production methods for such CNT films and corresponding quality metrology, which are critical for pushing the CNT-based transistor technology to manufacturing, should be developed in advance. Much progress has been made on fabrication of CNT films; however, there still lacks a metrology for thoroughly quantifying their quality until now. In this paper, through comparing study of CNT films fabricated by dip-coating (DC) and direct deposition (DD) methods, local anisotropy in the film is revealed to impact the performance uniformity of devices so fabricated in a spatial scale dependent manner. The anisotropy effect should be taken into account for the quality characterization of CNT films, which was not noticed in previous studies. Based on these findings, we propose a four-parameter metrology to quantify the overall quality of the CNT films, which includes the local tube density (DL), global density uniformity (Cv), local degree of order (OL), and the relative tube proportion in a certain orientation (Pθ) at a location. The four-parameter characterization and corresponding device performance confirm DC films are superior to DD films for practical application. The four-parameter metrology is not only powerful for overall quality evaluation of CNT films, but also able to predict the fluctuation of devices’ performance. Therefore, this material metrology is important for devices and circuits design and valuable for pushing the CNT-based transistor technology forward.

Keywords

carbon nanotubethin filmsquality metrologylocal anisotropytransistors

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Nano Research
Volume 13 Issue 6,
June 2020
Pages 1749-1755
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-020-2801-1
Cite this article:
Zhao J, Shen L, Liu F, et al. Quality metrology of carbon nanotube thin films and its application for carbon nanotube-based electronics. Nano Research, 2020, 13(6): 1749-1755. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2801-1
Topics:
Carbon films ManufactureThin film circuitsThin films

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Received: 20 February 2020
Revised: 27 March 2020
Accepted: 10 April 2020
Published: 15 May 2020
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
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