Large Scale Assembly of Pristine Semiconducting Carbon Nanotube Network-Based Devices Exhibiting Intrinsic Characteristics

We report the large-scale fabrication of high-performance field effect transistors (FETs) based on pristine semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (s-SWCNT) networks without bundles or organic impurities, thus exhibiting its intrinsic characteristics. Here, the solution of pristine s-SWCNTs without bundles or organic impurities was 2 prepared in nonpolar solvent via filtration and centrifugation processes, and the s-SWCNTs in the solution were selectively assembled onto specific regions on the solid substrates via a directed assembly strategy. The fabricated FET devices based on such pristine s-SWCNT networks could exhibit a rather large on-off ratio up to over similar to 10(6) and a subthreshold swing as small as similar to 490 mV/dec, which are comparable to those of a single s-SWCNT-based device with the same device structure. Importantly, the s-SWCNT devices exhibited anomalous gating behaviors such as an on-current saturation at a large gate bias and unconventional scaling behaviors, which are quite different from those of previous SWCNT network-based devices. Such anomalous behaviors can be explained by a simple model based on the networks of contact and CNT resistances, which implies that the anomalous behaviors are, in fact, the intrinsic characteristics of pristine s-SWCNT network-based devices. Our work provides a new insight about the intrinsic characteristics of pristine s-SWCNT network-based devices and, thus, should be an important guideline for the future research and applications of high-performance s-SWCNT network-based devices.