Nanowelding of carbon nanotube-metal contacts: an effective way to control the Schottky barrier and performance of carbon nanotube based field effect transistors

Argo Nurbawono; Aihua Zhang; Yongqing Cai; Yihong Wu; Yuan Ping Feng; Chun Zhang

doi:10.1063/1.4711082

Nanowelding of carbon nanotube-metal contacts: an effective way to control the Schottky barrier and performance of carbon nanotube based field effect transistors

J Chem Phys. 2012 May 7;136(17):174704. doi: 10.1063/1.4711082.

Authors

Argo Nurbawono¹, Aihua Zhang, Yongqing Cai, Yihong Wu, Yuan Ping Feng, Chun Zhang

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 2 Science Drive 3, Singapore.

PMID: 22583262
DOI: 10.1063/1.4711082

Abstract

Schottky barriers formed at carbon nanotube (CNT)-metal contacts have been well known to be crucial for the performance of CNT based field effect transistors (FETs). Through first principles calculations we show that a nanowelding process can drastically reduce the Schottky barriers at CNT-metal interfaces, resulting in significantly improved conductivity of CNT-based FETs. The proposed nanowelding can be realized by either laser local heating or a heating process via a controllable pulse current. Results presented in this paper may have great implications in future design and applications of CNT-based electronics.