Decomposable s‐Tetrazine Copolymer Enables Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotube Thin Film Transistors and Sensors with Improved Sensitivity

Abstract

Semiconducting single‐walled carbon nanotubes (sc‐SWCNTs) enriched by a conjugated polymer extraction process have been actively studied for various applications in both electronics and optoelectronics. Although the resulting tube samples usually have high sc‐purity and concentration, SWCNT networks from such dispersions typically contain residual conjugated polymer that may degrade device performance and its removal remains a challenge while maintaining uniform, dense SWCNT thin film networks. In this study, a novel polymer–SWCNT combination based on an alternating bisfuran‐s‐tetrazine and benzo[1,2‐b:4,5‐b′]dithiophene copolymer abbreviated as PBDTFTz is proposed. This polymer decomposes at >250 °C or under UV irradiation. In situ transistor characterization under laser irradiation confirms the polymer decomposition. The study of the tube network in the transistor channel at various channel lengths reveals significantly reduced contact resistance attributed to removal of the wrapping PBDTFTz polymer. In ammonia sensing experiments, sc‐SWCNT networks demonstrate rapid and reversible responses, while the unwrapped nanotube networks prove superior in terms of signal to noise ratio and a detection limit of 2.5 ppb is calculated, almost four times better than polymer wrapped nanotubes.

Carbon Nanotube Transistors as Gas Sensors: Response Differentiation Using Polymer Gate Dielectrics

“…The response was reversible in all cases, and a fast recovery was seen except for the two amines where V T returned to its original value after 5–10 min. Such recovery times compare favorably with other CNT-based sensors operated at room temperature. ,− It is possible that the continuous sweep method also contributes to reset the transistor to its original ambient air values. ,,− For d I /d V G ( y -axis on the right side), a reduction is observed for all eight analytes in Figure . For methanol (MeOH), isopropanol (IPA), and acetone, the recovery dynamics of d I /d V G show two components, with the fast component accounting for 70% of the recovery.…”

Diameter-Dependent Semiconducting Carbon Nanotube Network Transistor Performance

“…From the four sets data of various channel lengths, the contact resistance R c can be extracted by the transmission line method (TLM) as shown in Figure S10, and R c corrected mobility data are then reported. 42 The sample 65 network gives hole mobility of 1.2 cm 2 /(V s), which was smaller than these from long 65 samples prepared by shear force method 43 but reasonable considering their much shorter length. The sample 75 network TFTs showed hole and electron mobility at 1.4 and 0.05 cm 2 /(V s), which are better than the reported data of (7, 5) chirality based TFTs from CPE process.…”

Degradable Fluorene- and Carbazole-Based Copolymers for Selective Extraction of Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

“…Moreover, high semiconducting purity of polymer-sorted SWCNTs can be further determined by the performance of thin-film transistors upon polymer decomposition, as recently published by Bao and Malenfant on devices made from the large diameter CNTs. , …”