Chemical vapor deposition growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes with controlled structures for nanodevice applications

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), a promising substitute to engineer prospective nanoelectronics, have attracted much attention because of their superb structures and physical properties. The unique properties of SWNTs rely sensitively on their specific chiral structures, including the diameters, chiral angles, and handedness. Furthermore, high-performance and integrated circuits essentially require SWNT samples with well-aligned arrays, of single conductive type and of pure chirality. Although much effort has been devoted to chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of SWNTs, their structure control, growth mechanism, and structural characterizations are still the primary obstacles for the fabrication and application of SWNT-based nanodevices. In this Account, we focus on our established CVD growth methodology to fulfill the requirements of nanodevice applications. A rational strategy was successfully exploited to construct complex architectures, selectively enrich semiconducting (s) or metallic (m) SWNTs, and control chirality. First, well-aligned and highly dense SWNT arrays are beneficial for nanodevice integration. For the directed growth mode, anisotropic interactions between the SWNTs and the crystallographic structure of substrate are crucial for their growth orientation. Just as crystals possess various symmetries, SWNTs with controlled geometries have the corresponding turning angles. Their complex architectures come from the synergetic effect of lattice and gas flow directed modes. Especially, the aligned orientations of SWNTs on graphite are chirality-selective, and their chiral angles, handedness, and (n,m) index have been conveniently and accurately determined. Second, UV irradiation and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) washing-off methods have been explored to selectively remove m-SWNTs, leaving only s-SWNT arrays on the surface. Moreover, the UV-assisted technique takes the advantages of low cost and high efficiency and it directly produces a high ratio of s-SWNT arrays. We also designed a smart scotch tape to sort out the s-SWNTs and m-SWNTs from the as-grown mixture with 3-aminopropyl-triethoxysilane and triethoxyphenylsilane as glues, respectively. This is analogous to the mechanical exfoliation of a graphene sheet. Third, the obtained SWNT intramolecular junctions obtained by temperature-mediated CVD indicate that temperature can seriously affect the SWNT's chirality during its growth. Importantly, the cloning method can validate the chirality-controlled growth of SWNTs, and the cloning efficiency is significantly improved on a quartz surface. Well-aligned SWNT arrays with a high density and controlled structures are highly desirable for carbon nanoelectronics. We hope that the advanced methodology used here will promote their controlled preparation and provide insights into the growth mechanism of SWNTs.