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Materials processing

Sorting out carbon nanotube electronics

Nature Nanotechnology volume 1, pages 17–18 (2006)Cite this article

A new and scalable method for separating metallic from semiconducting carbon nanotubes will make for easier wiring of nanocircuits and lead to more reliable nanoelectronic devices.

The availability of both semiconducting and metallic variants of carbon nanotubes, combined with their intrinsically nanoscale size, has led naturally to ideas of nanotube-based microelectronics. In the most optimistic of visions, the scaling limits now anticipated for silicon microprocessors could, one day, be overcome by the use of self-assembled nanotube components. There is a catch, however, in that all nanotube synthesis methods invariably make a mixture of both metallic and semiconducting tubes (see Box 1). To build reliable devices, some kind of selection process must be made — preferably one that can be performed easily and on a large scale. On page 60 of this issue, Mark Hersam and co-workers1 at Northwestern University show that by coating as-synthesized carbon nanotubes in a combination of surfactants (engineered soaps, if you will), they can be sorted by both diameter and electronic type.

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Figure 1: Carbon nanotubes wrapped with surfactants can be separated by diameter and electronic type when centrifuged at high g-forces.

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  1. Department of Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32611-8440, Florida, USA

    Andrew G. Rinzler

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  1. Andrew G. Rinzler
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Rinzler, A. Sorting out carbon nanotube electronics. Nature Nanotech 1, 17–18 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2006.76

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