Copper oxide thin-flim and nanowire for e-textile applications

Abstract

Devices fabricated using nanowire structures can provide performance enhancement as well as open new applications. Integration of electronics into textile, referred to as e-textile, offers an opportunity for future electronics. Herein, copper and copper oxide based nanostructures are embedded for e-textile. Metallic copper wire is utilized as a growth substrate, which is simultaneously used as the fiber of mesh textiles. Among various metals, copper is promising as it is non-toxic and relatively abundant on earth. The motivating factor is ease of growth of nanostructures; the nanowire and thin-film forms are synthesized by self-catalytic vapor-solid growth. Simply heating with oxygen gas can form copper oxide nanowires or thin-film depending on the growth conditions. As key building blocks in e-textile, memory, transistor, and interconnect are presented. The resistive memory is comprised of copper oxide thin-film sandwiched within two orthogonal fibers. For a metal semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET), a Schottky junction is used as the gate to channel barrier. The copper fiber and copper oxide thin-film are devoted to the gate and channel, respectively. For an interconnection, the neighboring fibers are electrically connected by transforming copper oxide nanowires into copper nanowires. Hydrogen thermal reduction of copper oxide is proved to be effective to make conductive nanowires.Inp