Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Printed Integrated Circuits

Our Phase II SBIR project will aim to develop a manufacturing path for a printed integrated circuit (PICs) platform based on thin film transistors (TFT) constructed using carbon nanotube (CNT) fabrics. The Phase II project will continue this development towards a complete TFT CNT printing platform via the demonstration of TFT devices and circuits such as a CNT complementary transistor pair (n- and p-type), inverter circuits, ring oscillator circuits and RF (radio frequency) transistors. These developments will lead towards the pathway in prototyping ink-jet printed biosensors for hormone detection. Essential technical challenges that will be addressed within Phase II include scaling the purification of semiconducting CNT inks for manufacturing, development of stable n-type doping methods, the development of a TFT gate stack and the optimization of TFT device and circuit printing. Our ultimate goal is to develop a simple and low-cost CNT ink-jet printing platform where one can simply print devices, sensors or circuits with a push of a button.