title: Quantifying Single-Carbon Nanotube-Electrode Contact via the Nanoimpact Method.
abstract: A new methodology is developed to enable the measurement of the resistance across individual carbon nanotube-electrode contacts. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are suspended in the solution phase and occasionally contact the electrified interface, some of which bridge a micron-sized gap between two microbands of an interdigitated gold electrode. A potential difference is applied between the contacts and the magnitude of the current increase after the arrival of the CNT gives a measure of the resistance associated with the single CNT-gold contact. These experiments reveal the presence of a high contact resistance (∼50 MΩ), which significantly dominates the charge-transfer process. Further measurements on ensembles of CNTs made using a dilute layer of CNTs affixed to the interdigitated electrode surface and measured in the absence of solvent showed responses consistent with the same high value of contact resistance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University , Oxford OX1 3QZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Xiuting
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University , Oxford OX1 3QZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Batchelor-McAuley
authors.affiliation: Shanghai Key Laboratory of Materials Protection and Advanced Materials in Electric Power, Shanghai University of Electric Power , 2103 Pingliang Road, Shanghai 200090, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Lidong
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University , Oxford OX1 3QZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Stanislav V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Sokolov
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials, University of Oxford , Oxford OX1 3PH, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Neil P
authors.initials: NP
authors.lastname: Young
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University , Oxford OX1 3QZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Richard G
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9841-5041
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Compton