Nanodesign and Simulation Toward Nanoelectronic Devices

Abstract

The low-dimensional allotropes of carbon have drawn much attention in a multitude of fields owing to their outstanding fundamental properties and potential for applications. Interest in such systems has branched out from carbon fullerenes and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) toward other novel carbon nanomaterials such as graphitic onions, cones, nanohorns, nanohelices, nanobarrels, and graphene. All of these unique carbon nanomaterials show promising capabilities for applications in electronic devices. Especially, CNT has the potential to make the process of development of electronics comprehensible to us as well as conquering many of the size limitations of the circuits with possible applications in integrated circuits and energy conservation. It is believed that CNTelectronics shares the potential, together with Biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence to improve current devices. Such advances can then be used to solve problems not possible in present. Conductive and high-strength composites; energy conversion and energy storage devices; sensors; field emission displays and radiation sources; hydrogen storage media; and nanometer-sized semiconductor devices, probes, and interconnects are some of the many potential applications based on carbon nanotubes. Some of these applications are now realized in products. Others are demonstrated in early to advanced devices. In the field of electronics, experiments over the past several years have given researchers hope that wires and functional devices tens of nanometres or smaller in size could be made from such low-dimensional materials and incorporated into electronic circuits that work far faster and on much less power than those existing today. In the long term, the most valuable applications will take further advantage of the unique electronic properties of lowdimensional materials. Surrounded by such anticipation, the advancement of techniques for characterizing and manipulating of individual molecules and the availability of firstprinciples methods to describe electron tunneling through atomic chains or single molecules have facilitated the development of a variety of electronic devices, attesting to the potential utility of these molecules in nanoelectronic device architectures. Few possible applications of CNT in electronics are discussed below: Carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CN-FETs): CNT is one of the candidates for a quantum wire for the molecular-FET. Multi-channel carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNFETs) have been realized by depositing a large number of CNTs onto a metallic back gate. This work clearly demonstrates that CN-FETs are promising components for high-