IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Nanotubes: Science and Applications Topical Conference Wednesday Sessions
       Session NT-WeM

Paper NT-WeM5
Electrical Transport through Vertically Aligned In-situ Contacted Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes

Wednesday, October 31, 2001, 9:40 am, Room 133

Session: Nanotubes: Nanoelectronics
Presenter: A. Graham, Infineon Technologies, Corporate Research, Germany
Authors: F. Kreupl, Infineon Technologies, Corporate Research, Germany
A. Graham, Infineon Technologies, Corporate Research, Germany
E. Unger, Infineon Technologies, Corporate Research, Germany
M. Liebau, Infineon Technologies, Corporate Research, Germany
W. Hönlein, Infineon Technologies, Corporate Research, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
In order to exploit the high electrical performance of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), they have to be connected at both ends with highly conductive, i.e., metallic contacts. In addition to the quality of the grown CNTs, it is also very important that the contact resistances are as low as possible. CNTs grown on metallic surfaces give inherently a low contact resistance as the catalyst particles from which the nanotubes grow out of contact almost all layers of the multi-wall CNTs. We will report on electrical transport measurements on arrays of vertically aligned multi-wall CNTs contacted at the top and bottom. The bottom electrode with catalyst particles is covered completely with a thick silicon dioxide layer, in which holes of various sizes are etched down to the bottom electrode with reactive ion beam etching. The holes serve as templates in which CNTs are grown with chemical vapor deposition (CVD) directly from catalyst particles at the bottom electrode and contacted on top with a second metal electrode. Electrical measurements of the CNTs yielded extremely low resistances indicating electrical transport through almost all shells of the individual CNTs.