Improvement of contact resistance between carbon nanotubes and metal electrodes for high performance electronics

Abstract

The authors developed a simple method that allows control of contact resistance between random network carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and metals such as gold and palladium to facilitate the development of high performance electronics on plastic substrates. The approach involves the deposition of a small amount of aluminum between random network CNTs and metal electrodes during the device fabrication process. The contact resistances of the resulting devices were measured, which showed that devices containing a thin layer of aluminum have lower contact resistances (Au: 1.086 kΩ μm and Pd: 2.282 kΩ μm) than devices without the layer (Au: 6.841 kΩ μm and Pd: 7.515 kΩ μm).