Electrical engineering

Physics

Contact resistance

Electrical contacts

Nanotechnology

Transistor

Lock (firearm)

Current density

Engineering

Voltage

Sphere packing

Composite material

Materials science

Molybdenum disulfide

Layer (electronics)

Quantum mechanics

Monolayer

Optoelectronics

Carbon nanotube

Nanometre

Mechanical engineering

Nature Nanotechnology

The assembly of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into high-density horizontal arrays is strongly desired for practical applications, but challenges remain despite myriads of research efforts. Herein, we developed a non-destructive soft-lock drawing method to achieve ultraclean single-walled CNT arrays with a very high degree of alignment (angle standard deviation of ~0.03°). These arrays contained a large portion of nanometre-sized CNT bundles, yielding a high packing density (~400 µm−1) and high current carrying capacity (∼1.8 × 108 A cm−2). This alignment strategy can be generally extended to diverse substrates or sources of raw single-walled CNTs. Significantly, the assembled CNT bundles were used as nanometre electrical contacts of high-density monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) transistors, exhibiting high current density (~38 µA µm−1), low contact resistance (~1.6 kΩ µm), excellent device-to-device uniformity and highly reduced device areas (0.06 µm2 per device), demonstrating their potential for future electronic devices and advanced integration technologies. A non-destructive soft-lock drawing method can achieve carbon nanotube arrays with ultraclean surfaces and a very high degree of alignment. Such arrays could be used as nano-sized electrical contacts of high-density monolayer MoS2 transistors.

Soft-lock drawing of super-aligned carbon nanotube bundles for nanometre electrical contacts