Eric S. Snow

Simultaneous conductance and capacitance measurements on a single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) network are used to extract an intrinsic property of molecular adsorbates. Adsorbates from dilute chemical vapors produce a rapid response in both the capacitance and the conductance of the SWNT network. These responses are caused by a combination of two distinct physiochemical properties of the adsorbates: charge transfer and polarizability. We find that the ratio of the conductance response to the capacitance response is a concentration-independent intrinsic property of a chemical vapor that can assist in its identification.

We show that the capacitance of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) is highly sensitive to a broad class of chemical vapors and that this transduction mechanism can form the basis for a fast, low-power sorption-based chemical sensor. In the presence of a dilute chemical vapor, molecular adsorbates are polarized by the fringing electric fields radiating from the surface of a SWNT electrode, which causes an increase in its capacitance. We use this effect to construct a high-performance chemical sensor by thinly coating the SWNTs with chemoselective materials that provide a large, class-specific gain to the capacitance response. Such SWNT chemicapacitors are fast, highly sensitive, and completely reversible.

We report the scaling behavior of 1∕f noise in single-walled carbon nanotube devices. In this study we use two-dimensional carbon nanotube networks to explore the geometric scaling of 1∕f noise and find that for devices of a given resistance the noise scales inversely with device size. We have established an empirical formula that describes this behavior over a wide range of device parameters that can be used to assess the noise characteristics of carbon nanotube-based electronic devices and sensors.

We describe the properties and potential applications of an electronic material that consists of an interconnected random network of single-walled carbon nanotubes. This material possesses useful electronic properties, and it can be patterned into devices with high yield using conventional microfabrication technology. One unique aspect of this material is that every atom is a surface atom. For this reason nanotubenetworks form an ideal electronic material to utilize interface phenomena to engineer its properties for specific applications. We discuss two such applications: chemical sensing and macroelectronics.

We describe a simple technique to grow small (approximately 1–4 nm) diam carbon nanotubes both in and out of the plane of a silicon substrate using the decomposition of ethylene and a nickel–iron thin film catalyst. This procedure can be used to produce nanotubes for ultrasharp atomic force microscope probes as well as for nanotube-based electronic devices. The technique is compatible with the patterned growth of nanotubes and with standard device microfabrication processes.