Temperature-mediated growth of single-walled carbon-nanotube intramolecular junctions.
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 technology. 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 methods, 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.
Yao
Yagang
Y
State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, China.
Li
Qingwen
Q
Zhang
Jin
J
Liu
Ran
R
Jiao
Liying
L
Zhu
Yuntian T
YT
Liu
Zhongfan
Z