Electric Field Assisted Alignment of Nanotubes for Low-Pass and Band-Pass Filters

Abstract

Because of their unique electrical properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), particularly the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), have shown potential applications in electronics. In this study, by controlling their alignments under varied electric fields, SWCNTs were used to prepare microelectrode devices, which were examined and show low-pass filtering harmonic responses. By analyzing the SWCNT-based devices (vs. bare-chip), equivalent circuit models were created to understand these devices and the mechanism of their filtering performance. After a series of simplification and optimization, a final model was obtained and a hypothesis was proposed to explain the relationships between the CNT structures and the corresponding electrical properties. The resulted model was verified about its predictability to the filtering performance of CNT-based devices. In addition, similar devices were fabricated with two types of Rosette nanotubes and were then analyzed regarding their electric properties, confirming its effectiveness of the methodology that was used for the CNT-based devices.