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  • Review Article
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Chirality engineering for carbon nanotube electronics

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 1, pages 149–162 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), tubular nanostructures consisting of rolled-up graphene, are promising materials for electronic devices at the nanometre and molecular regimes. Fundamentally, the electronic properties of CNTs and their junctions depend on global and local chiralities, as defined by quantum boundary conditions along the circumferential and longitudinal directions. As such, CNTs can behave as a metal, a semiconductor or a quantum dot in an electronic device. Much of the progress in CNT electronics, going from single resistors and transistors to complex functional logic and communication devices, thin films and flexible electronics, sensors and intelligent systems, has been achieved through control over the ‘global chirality’ of CNTs — the distribution of chiralities at the macroscale. In this Review, we summarize approaches to control global and local CNT chiralities by growth, separation and transformation strategies. We then discuss opportunities and challenges for chirality engineering towards surpassing the performance of conventional electronic devices, and development of unconventional CNT quantum electronics including coherent quantum transistors and quantum sensors.

Key points

  • The electrical properties of CNTs are determined by the chirality along the circumferential direction to be metallic or semiconducting, and by the confinement imposed along the longitudinal direction to be a quantum dot.

  • For large-scale applications of CNT electronics, approaches have been developed to control the global chirality distribution, including direct growth for defect-free nanotubes and post-growth separation for industrial applications.

  • For fabricating CNT molecular-junction-based electronic devices, modulated growth and chirality transformation techniques have been explored, but this development is still in its early stages.

  • Progress in controlling the global chirality distribution has led to advancements in CNT electronics ranging from transistors, amplifiers and microprocessors to transparent electrodes, flexible transistors and electronic skins.

  • Complete control of chirality would enable conventional CNT electronics to approach the performance limit and would create new opportunities for emerging quantum devices.

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Fig. 1: Chirality and the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes.
Fig. 2: Global and local chirality engineering of carbon nanotubes.
Fig. 3: Progress in CNT electronics based on nanotube chirality.
Fig. 4: Perspective on chirality-engineered carbon nanotube (CNT) electronics.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. N. Futaba and G. Chen (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan) for discussions. D.M.T. discloses support from JSPS Kakenhi (grants JP25820336, JP20K05281, JP23H01796), JST-FOREST Program (grant JPMJFR223T, Japan), WPI-MANA ‘Challenging Research Program (CRP)’ and NIMS ‘Support system for curiosity-driven research’. R.X. discloses support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (grant 2023YFE0101300) and Zhejiang province (grant 2022R01001). S.M. discloses support from JSPS KAKENHI (grants JP23H00174, JP23H05443, JP21KK0087) and from JST CREST (grant JPMJCR20B5). H.-M.C. discloses support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 52188101). C.L. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (grant 2022YFA1203302), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 52130209, 52188101) and Liaoning Revitalization Talents Program (XLYC2002037). D.G. discloses support from an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (grant FL160100089).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan

    Dai-Ming Tang, Shinsuke Ishihara & Dmitri Golberg

  2. Center for Basic Research on Materials, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan

    Ovidiu Cretu

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yongjia Zheng, Keigo Otsuka & Shigeo Maruyama

  4. State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Rong Xiang

  5. Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China

    Hui-Ming Cheng & Chang Liu

  6. Faculty of Materials Science and Energy Engineering/Institute of Technology for Carbon Neutrality, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

    Hui-Ming Cheng

  7. Centre for Materials Science and School of Chemistry and Physics, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Dmitri Golberg

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D.M.T. led the collaborative work. All authors contributed to the discussions, and drafted and revised the manuscript.

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Tang, DM., Cretu, O., Ishihara, S. et al. Chirality engineering for carbon nanotube electronics. Nat Rev Electr Eng 1, 149–162 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-023-00011-8

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