Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (sc-SWNTs), with high charge carrier mobility and solution processibility, hold great promise for high-performance low-cost thin film transistor applications. However, separating the semiconducting (sc) from metallic SWNTs in large quantities still remains a challenge. We reported the sorting of sc-SWNTs with polythiophene derivatives in a simple and high yield method. MD simulation demonstrates that the polymers sides have significant impact on the sorting yield and the selectivity.  The increased alkyl side chain lengths can bind the sc-SWNTs better due to the higher surface contact areas while the modeling of the polymer without side chains do not show any selectivity.Additionally, we used the polymer-sorted sc-SWNTs for fabricating transistors as well as flexible complementary logic circuit. This was achieved by using our molecular n-type dopants to tune the carrier density of polymer-sorted SWNTs films by both vacuum evaporation and solution processing. We can tune the threshold voltage of SWNTs transistors continuously and reliably over a wide range. As a result of tunable doping, we fabricated inverter with unprecedented high noise margin of 28V at VDD = 80V (70% of 1/2VDD) and a gain of 85 by using inject printed dopants. sc-SWNT CMOS inverters (noise margin at ~72% of 1/2VDD), NAND and NOR logic gates, with rail-to-rail output voltage swing and sub-nanowatts power consumption, were also fabricated onto a highly flexible substrate for the first time.

Sorting of semiconducting SWNTs by conjugated polymers and their electronic applications

247th National Meeting (2014)

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