Esc 419 Writing Assignment Thomas Boyer Revised
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Electronic Applications of Carbon Nanotubes Thomas Boyer Carbon nanotubes can be imagined as sheets of graphene rolled into a cylinder with open or closed end. Graphene is pure carbon bonded into a single sheet of repeating hexagonal lattice patterns. Graphene has many interesting applications and properties, and one can imagine that carbon nanotubes, made from graphene, have similar interesting applications and properties. Carbon nanotubes are exceptionally strong and have interesting electronic properties. The diameter and length of nanotubes vary drastically, but are categorized as single or multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Their lengths can become exceptionally large and are limited only by the time it takes to manufacture them. Carbon nanotubes have many promising applications, especially in electronics. The most obvious application is to use them as nano- wires because they can be highly conductive, but there are many promising properties of carbon nanotubes that scientists find could be used for electronic applications. Carbon nanotubes appear to be useful for microelectronics because of their interesting electron scattering and band gap properties. They may be used in transistors, connectors, or memory. One group of scientists has even made capacitative wire using nanotube composite fibers. Figure 1 Carbon Nanotube Transistor
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Transcript of Esc 419 Writing Assignment Thomas Boyer Revised
Electronic Applications of Carbon Nanotubes
Thomas Boyer
Carbon nanotubes can be imagined as sheets of graphene rolled into a cylinder with open or closed end. Graphene is pure carbon bonded into a single sheet of repeating hexagonal lattice patterns. Graphene has many interesting applications and properties, and one can imagine that carbon nanotubes, made from graphene, have similar interesting applications and properties. Carbon nanotubes are exceptionally strong and have interesting electronic properties. The diameter and length of nanotubes vary drastically, but are categorized as single or multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Their lengths can become exceptionally large and are limited only by the time it takes to manufacture them.Carbon nanotubes have many promising applications, especially in electronics. The most obvious application is to use them as nano-wires because they can be highly conductive, but there are many promising properties of carbon nanotubes that scientists find could be used for electronic applications. Carbon nanotubes appear to be useful for microelectronics because of their interesting electron scattering and band gap properties. They may be used in transistors, connectors, or memory. One group of scientists has even made capacitative wire using nanotube composite fibers. Figure 1 Carbon Nanotube Transistor
Carbon nanotubes can be either metallic or semiconducting, and are categorized by their structure. Nanotubes in theory can carry an electric current density of 4 x 109 A/cm^2, which is a thousand times greater than that of copper. Defects in the carbon nanotubes can cause a decrease in tensile strength as well as a decrease in conductivity. Certain defects can cause specific areas to become semiconducting or have different magnetic properties, an example of such a defect would be a single monatomic vacancy.The main problem for electrical applications of carbon nanotubes is the lack of ability for mass production. For example carbon nanotube field-effect transistors have been made that operate at room temperature, but there is no way to mass produce them accurately and affordably at this moment.
