Selective Etching of Metallic Carbon Nanotubes by Gas-Phase Reaction
Guangyu Zhang,*
Pengfei Qi,*
Xinran Wang,
Yuerui Lu,
Xiaolin Li,
Ryan Tu,
Sarunya Bangsaruntip,
David Mann,
Li Zhang,
Hongjie Dai
Metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes generally coexist in as-grown materials. We present a gas-phase plasma hydrocarbonation reaction to selectively etch and gasify metallic nanotubes, retaining the semiconducting nanotubes in near-pristine form. With this process, 100% of purely semiconducting nanotubes were obtained and connected in parallel for high-current transistors. The diameter- and metallicity-dependent "dry" chemical etching approach is scalable and compatible with existing semiconductor processing for future integrated circuits.
Department of Chemistry and Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
* These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hdai{at}stanford.edu