3D assembly of carbon nanotubes for fabrication of field-effect transistors through nanomanipulation and electron-beam-induced deposition

Abstract

Three-dimensional carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (3D CNTFETs) possess predictable characteristics that rival those of planar CNTFETs and Si-based MOSFETs. However, due to the lack of a reliable assembly technology, they are rarely reported on, despite the amount of attention they receive. To address this problem, we propose the novel concept of a 3D CNTFET and develop its assembly strategy based on nanomanipulation and the electron-beam-induced deposition (EBID) technique inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). In particular, the electrodes in our transistor design are three metallic cuboids of the same size, and their front, top and back surfaces are all wrapped up in CNTs. The assembly strategy is employed to build the structure through a repeated basic process of pick-up, placement, fixing and cutting of CNTs. The pick-up and placement is performed through one nanomanipulator with four degrees of freedom. Fixing is carried out through the EBID technique so as to improve the mechanical and electrical characteristics of the CNT/electrodes connection. CNT cutting is undertaken using the typical method of electrical breakdown. Experimental results showed that two CNTs were successfully assembled on the front sides of the cubic electrodes. This validates our assembly method for the 3D CNTFET. Also, when contact resistance was measured, tens of kilohms of resistance was observed at the CNT-EBID deposition-FET electrodes junction.. This manifests the electrical reliability of our assembly strategy.

Dielectrophoretic manipulation of nanomaterials: A review

“…These multiple individual nanowires could be selected according to their electrical characteristics and precisely positioned at different locations in a low‐conductivity liquid to form functional nanodevices with desired electrical properties. In addition, there are numerous other relevant excellent researches based on DEP manipulation of one‐dimensional nanomaterials, which are not be discussed in detail here .…”

Simulation and fabrication of carbon nanotube–nanoparticle interconnected structures

“…In 2003, Fukuda developed a nano-operating platform system with 16 degrees of freedom integrated with four operating units (Fukuda et al, 2003;Yang et al, 2016;Shi et al, 2017), which is capable of realizing nanoscale-to millimeterscale step motion and measuring the electrical properties (Yu et al, 2017a) and physical properties such as Young's modulus (Fukuda et al, 2005) of carbon nanotube materials as well as controlling the construction of complex nanos-tructures in three dimensions (Yu et al, 2017b). Zhang et al (2011) developed a new positioning device to help positioning in nano-operation.…”

Direct manipulation of metallic nanosheets by shear force microscopy

“…Along with atom/molecule-manipulation originated from the emergence of scanning tunnelling microscopy (Eigler & Schweizer, 1990;Jung et al, 1996;Nickel et al, 2013;Kaya et al, 2017), micro/nanomanipulation is a rapidly growing technology and holds promising applications in various fields, including photonic/electronic devices, chemical/biosensors etc. (Guo et al, 2013;Ono et al, 2016;Gwo et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2017). Over the last decade, gyshang@buaa.edu.cn many advanced methods for micro/nanomanipulation have been exploited based on different strategies, such as gradient forces caused by electron-beam in scanning electric microscope (SEM) (Roxworthy et al, 2014;Vesseur et al, 2012), highly focused light-beam induced forces in optical tweezer (OT) Avila et al, 2017), and tip-sample interaction forces of scanning force microscopy (SFM) etc.…”