A group of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have discovered that by using a semiconductor materials known as carbon nonotubes, the “reliability and performance of transistors and circuits greatly improves.” These nanotubes have become a better substitute than silicon for electronic devices. The group has published their findings and research results in a paper titled “Applied Physics Letters.”
“In the paper, researchers examined the effect of a fluoropolymer coating called PVDF-TrFE on single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) transistors and ring oscillator circuits, and demonstrated that these coatings can substantially improve the performance of single-walled carbon nanotube devices. PVDF-TrFE is also known by its long chemical name polyvinyledenedifluoride-tetrafluoroethylene.”
“We attribute the improvements to the polar nature of PVDF-TrFE that mitigates the negative effect of impurities and defects on the performance of semiconductor single-walled carbon nanotubes. The use of [PVDF-TrFE] capping layers will be greatly beneficial to the adoption of single-walled carbon nanotube circuits in printed electronics and flexible display applications,” Ananth Dodabalapur, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT Austin, said.
“For years, scientists have been experimenting with carbon nanotube devices as a successor to silicon devices, as silicon could soon meet its physical limit in delivering increasingly smaller, faster and cheaper electronic devices. Although circuits made with single-walled carbon nanotube are expected to be more energy-efficient than silicon ones in future, their drawbacks in field-effect transistors, such as high power dissipation and less stability, currently limit their applications in printed electronics,” Dodabalapur said.
