Intrinsically flexible all-carbon-nanotube electronics enabled by a hybrid organic–inorganic gate dielectric

Abstract

The advancement of Internet of Things has stimulated huge demands on low-voltage flexible electronics. Carbon-nanotube (CNT)-based electronics are of great promise to this end for their intrinsic flexibility, high carrier mobility, and capability to synthesize as semiconducting or metallic to serve as the channels, electrodes, and interconnects of circuits. However, the gate dielectric often has to adopt brittle oxides, which can seriously limit the device flexibility. Herein, we show that a hybrid polyimide-Al2O3 material can serve as a good gate dielectric to realize truly intrinsic flexibility of transistors and circuits based on CNTs. With this hybrid dielectric, high-performance all-CNT transistors and integrated circuits of inverters, ring oscillators, and logic gates are demonstrated. Particularly, the inverters exhibit a remarkably high gain of 342.5 and can be used as an analog amplifier for millivolt small signals. Ultralow voltage (50 mV) operation is also feasible, which highlights the great promise for low-power applications.