Carbon nanotube transistor breakthrough brings best performing devices yet

The team, led by materials science Associate Professor Michael Arnold, pictured, and Professor Padma Gopalan, has reported the highest performing carbon nanotube transistors yet demonstrated, with an on-off ratio 1000 times better and 100 times better conductance than the previous best carbon nanotube transistors. "Carbon nanotubes are very strong and very flexible, so they could also be used to make flexible displays and electronics that can stretch and bend, allowing you to integrate electronics into new places, like clothing," said Arnold. "The advance enables new types of electronics that aren't possible with the more brittle materials manufacturers are currently using." Drawing on more than two decades of carbon nanotube research, the team used a technique called floating evaporative self assembly to create a solution of ultra high purity semiconducting carbon nanotubes. The development is also said to bring closer the day when carbon nanotube transistors might be a feasible replacement for silicon transistors in processors and high frequency communication devices. "This is not an incremental improvement in performance," Arnold claimed. "With these results, we've really made a leap in carbon nanotube transistors. Our carbon nanotube transistors are an order of magnitude better in conductance than the best thin film transistor technologies currently being used commercially, whilst still switching on and off like a transistor is supposed to function."