Abstract
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess superior electronic and physical properties that make them ideal candidates for making next-generation electronic circuits that break the size limitation of current silicon-based technology1,2,3,4. The first critical step in making a full SWNT electronic circuit is to make SWNT intramolecular junctions in a controlled manner. Although SWNT intramolecular junctions have been grown by several methods2,5,6,7,8, they only grew inadvertently in most cases. Here, we report well-controlled temperature-mediated growth of intramolecular junctions in SWNTs. Specifically, by changing the temperature during growth, we found that SWNTs systematically form intramolecular junctions. This was achieved by a consistent variation in the SWNT diameter and chirality with changing growth temperature even though the catalyst particles remained the same. These findings provide a potential approach for growing SWNT intramolecular junctions at desired locations, sizes and orientations, which are important for making SWNT electronic circuits.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
McEuen, P. L. Nanotechnology—Carbon-based electronics. Nature 393, 15–17 (1998).
Yao, Z., Postma, H. W. C., Balents, L. & Dekker, C. Carbon nanotube intramolecular junctions. Nature 402, 273–276 (1999).
Baughman, R. H., Zakhidov, A. A. & de Heer, W. A. Carbon nanotubes—The route toward applications. Science 297, 787–792 (2002).
Javey, A., Guo, J., Wang, Q., Lundstrom, M. & Dai, H. J. Ballistic carbon nanotube field-effect transistors. Nature 424, 654–657 (2003).
Ho, G. W., Wee, A. T. S. & Lin, J. Electric field-induced carbon nanotube junction formation. Appl. Phys. Lett. 79, 260–262 (2001).
Yudasaka, M., Ichihashi, T., Kasuya, D., Kataura, H. & Iijima, S. Structure changes of single-wall carbon nanotubes and single-wall carbon nanohorns caused by heat treatment. Carbon 41, 1273–1280 (2003).
Doorn, S. K. et al. Raman spectral imaging of a carbon nanotube intramolecular junction. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 016802 (2005).
Doorn, S. K. et al. Raman spectroscopy and imaging of ultralong carbon nanotubes. J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 3751–3758 (2005).
Zheng, L. X. et al. Ultralong single-wall carbon nanotubes. Nature Mater. 3, 673–676 (2004).
Zhang, Y., Zhang, J., Son, H., Kong, J. & Liu, Z. Substrate-induced Raman frequency variation for single-walled carbon nanotubes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 17156–17157 (2005).
Huang, L. et al. Cobalt ultrathin film catalyzed ethanol chemical vapor deposition of single-walled carbon nanotubes. J. Phys. Chem. B 110, 11103–11109 (2006).
Dresselhaus, M. S., Dresselhaus, G., Jorio, A., Souza, A. G. & Saito, R. Raman spectroscopy on isolated single wall carbon nanotubes. Carbon 40, 2043–2061 (2002).
Kataura, H. et al. Optical properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes. Synth. Met. 103, 2555–2558 (1999).
Jorio, A. et al. Structural (n, m) determination of isolated single-wall carbon nanotubes by resonant Raman scattering. Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1118–1121 (2001).
White, C. T. & Mintmire, J. W. Fundamental properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes. J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 52–65 (2005).
Liao, X. Z. et al. Effect of catalyst composition on carbon nanotube growth. Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 2694–2696 (2003).
Huang, S. M., Woodson, M., Smalley, R. & Liu, J. Growth mechanism of oriented long single walled carbon nanotubes using “fast-heating” chemical vapor deposition process. Nano Lett. 4, 1025–1028 (2004).
Hernandez, E., Goze, C., Bernier, P. & Rubio, A. Elastic properties of single-wall nanotubes. Appl. Phys. A 68, 287–292 (1999).
Li, Y. et al. On the origin of preferential growth of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes. J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 6968–6971 (2005).
Melchor, S. & Dobado, J. A. CoNTub: An algorithm for connecting two arbitrary carbon nanotubes. J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. 44, 1639–1646 (2004).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by NSFC (20573002, 20673004, 50521201) and MOST (2006CB932701, 2006CB932403).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary information and figures S1-S6 (PDF 1038 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yao, Y., Li, Q., Zhang, J. et al. Temperature-mediated growth of single-walled carbon-nanotube intramolecular junctions. Nature Mater 6, 283–286 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1865
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1865
This article is cited by
-
Controlled growth of crossed ultralong carbon nanotubes by gas flow
Nano Research (2020)
-
Carbon Nanotube Assembly and Integration for Applications
Nanoscale Research Letters (2019)
-
Growing highly pure semiconducting carbon nanotubes by electrotwisting the helicity
Nature Catalysis (2018)
-
Arrays of horizontal carbon nanotubes of controlled chirality grown using designed catalysts
Nature (2017)
-
Metallic Catalysts for Structure-Controlled Growth of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes
Topics in Current Chemistry (2017)