Polyfluorene-sorted, carbon nanotube array field-effect transistors with increased current density and high on/off ratio.

Abstract

Challenges in eliminating metallic from semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and in controlling their alignment have limited the development of high-performance SWCNT-based field-effect transistors (FETs). We recently pioneered an approach for depositing aligned arrays of ultra-high-purity semiconducting SWCNTs, isolated using polyfluorene derivatives, called dose-controlled floating evaporative self-assembly. Here, we tailor FETs fabricated from these arrays to achieve on-conductance (G(on)) per width and an on-off ratio (G(on)/G(off)) of 261 μS/μm and 2 × 10(5), respectively, for a channel length (L(ch)) of 240 nm and 116 μS/μm and 1 × 10(6), respectively, for an L(ch) of 1 μm. We demonstrate 1400× greater G(on)/G(off) than SWCNT FETs fabricated by other methods, at comparable G(on) per width of ∼250 μS/μm and 30-100× greater G(on) per width at comparable G(on)/G(off) of 10(5)-10(7). The average G(on) per tube reaches 5.7 ± 1.4 μS at a packing density of 35 tubes/μm for L(ch) in the range 160-240 nm, limited by contact resistance. These gains highlight the promise of using ultra-high-purity semiconducting SWCNTs with controlled alignment for next-generation semiconductor electronics.