Abstract
The demonstration of field-effect transistors (FETs) based entirely on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) would enable the fabrication of high-on-current, flexible, transparent and stretchable devices owing to the excellent electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of SWNTs. Fabricating all-SWNT-based FETs via simple solution process, at room temperature and without using lithography and vacuum process could further broaden the applicability of all-SWNT-FETs. In this work, we report on biologically assembled all SWNT-based transistors and demonstrate that ion-gel-gated network structures of unsorted SWNTs assembled using a biological template material enabled operation of SWNT-based transistors at a very low voltage. The compatibility of the biologically assembled SWNT networks with ion gel dielectrics and the large capacitance of both the three-dimensional channel networks and the ion gel allowed an ultralow operation voltage. The all-SWNT-based FETs showed an Ion/Ioff value of >102, an on-current density per channel width of 2.16 × 10−4 A/mm at VDS = 0.4 V, and a field-effect hole mobility of 1.12 cm2/V · s in addition to the low operation voltage of <−0.5 V. We envision that our work suggests a solution-based simple and low-cost approach to realizing all-carbon-based FETs for low voltage operation and flexible applications.
Highlights
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are one of the most promising electronic materials for high-performance field-effect transistors (FETs)[1, 2]
We report on biologically assembled all SWNT-based transistors and demonstrate that the ion gel-gated all nanomesh-FETs operate at ultralow saturation voltages and show decent ION/IOFF and on-current density values
A nanomesh of SWNTs and M13 phage assembled in an aqueous solution were transferred using a pre-patterned stencil mask to form channels and source, drain, and gate electrodes
Summary
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are one of the most promising electronic materials for high-performance field-effect transistors (FETs)[1, 2]. Improved electrical contact at the channel-to-S/D interface results in a small contact resistance, which could lead to high on-current[3] Various approaches such as transferring, printing and self-assembly process have been developed to fabricate high performance CNT-based transistors[4, 5, 7,8,9, 11,12,13,14,15,16]. We report on biologically assembled all SWNT-based transistors and demonstrate that the ion gel-gated all nanomesh-FETs operate at ultralow saturation voltages and show decent ION/IOFF and on-current density values. We envision that our simple and low-cost method to fabricate all-SWNT-based high-performance FETs will provide a valuable route to future electronic devices that require low-voltage operation, mechanical flexibility and transparency
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