In this presentation, I will present on 2 recent advances in nanocarbon electronics from my laboratory: (1) We have pioneered a scalable approach for assembling parallel arrays of ultrahigh purity (Fig. 1) semiconducting nanotubes. This approach has allowed us to create carbon nanotube field effect transistors (FETs) with current density that exceeds Si and GaAs, for the first time, which has been a goal of the nanoelectronics field for 20+ years. (2) We have discovered how to drive graphene crystal growth with a large shape anisotropy through control of kinetics on the surface of Ge(001) single crystal wafers via CH₄ chemical vapor deposition. This discovery enables the direct synthesis of narrow, armchair, semiconducting nanoribbons. The ribbons are as narrow as 1.7 nm and are self-orienting, self-defining, and have smooth edges. The ribbons exhibit exceptional transport properties (e.g., high on-state conductance and on/off ratio at room temperature) and provide a promising pathway towards the direct integration of high-performance nanocarbon electronics onto conventional semiconductor wafer platforms.

Both aspects of this work have implications towards extending Moore’s Law, creating ultra-low energy logic circuits, developing higher bandwidth RF communication devices, and realizing next-generation FET based sensors.

[1] Joo et al. Langmuir (2014); Brady et al. APL (2014); Brady et al. ACS Nano (2014); Brady et al. Science Advances (2016); Jinkins et al. Langmuir (2017); Brady et al. J. Appl. Phys. (2017); Jinkins et al. In Preparation (2018).

[2] Jacobberger et al. Nature Comm. (2015); Jacobberger et al. ACS Nano (2017); Way et al. Nano Lett. (2018);

Fig. 1 SEM image of aligned semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) array FET.