GOALI: Scaling-up Electronic Purification of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes via Nanoscale Thermocapillary Flows for High Performance Transistors

从历史上看，微电子工业一直在推动集成电路技术的发展，缩小硅晶体管的尺寸，降低功耗并降低成本。 对于卫星技术等战略电子应用，先进材料的开发至关重要。单壁碳纳米管已经成为这些应用的重要候选材料。 业界认为，使用纳米管制造的电子器件最终可能会取代硅基器件用于逻辑应用;但众所周知，基于纳米管的射频晶体管作为无线系统中的高性能模拟元件非常重要。 高性能进步的关键是在晶圆级获得高纯度（99.999%半导体纳米管）的半导体纳米管对齐薄膜。 纳米管的按比例放大电子纯化是关键挑战。 最近，伊利诺斯州的研究小组开发了一种净化生长的对齐纳米管的方法，以满足这些令人生畏的要求。 这个学术与工业联络（GOALI）奖的赠款机会将支持将此纯化过程扩展到晶圆级所需的工作，并将其整合到与Northrup Grumman公司合作的纳米管场效应晶体管的记录过程中。 这项工作将产生巨大的社会效益，影响无线技术的功耗和性能，并将成为该领域首批可扩展的纳米制造开发工作之一。 这项工作将为未来的工程师在这种新的制造模式提供一个培训平台。 此外，这一跨学科的努力将扩大参与研究的代表性不足的群体通过使用在伊利诺伊州和诺斯罗普格鲁曼公司的夏季研究计划。通过化学气相沉积法生长的单壁碳纳米管的定向亚单层膜代表了用于高性能电子应用的有前途的材料平台。然而，薄膜的电子纯度是一个关键问题。 最近，伊利诺斯州的研究小组开发了一种基于热抗蚀剂的纯化方法，该热抗蚀剂在加工过程中用作半导体纳米管的蚀刻屏障。 该工艺使用薄有机膜中的纳米级热毛细流动作为从单壁纳米管的对齐阵列中完全选择性去除金属纳米管的处理策略。 与目前的微电子制造工具的兼容性表明，它可以作为一个可扩展的技术，纳米管衬底纯化。 微波激发导致通过该过程有效地、选择性地去除金属管，从而实现100%的纯度。 该研究小组将扩大用于晶圆级制造的热毛细管纯化方法，并将其引入Northrup Grumman的晶体管加工工作流程。 一个高容量的微波反应器将被设计，组装和开发。最终，高性能，低功耗，低噪声线性碳纳米管放大器将在晶圆级制造。

Historically the microelectronics industry has been driving integrated circuit technology development, shrinking silicon transistor sizes, reducing their power consumption and lowering their cost. For strategic electronic applications like satellite technologies, advanced materials development is essential. Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes have emerged as an important material candidate for these applications. The industry believes that electronic devices fabricated using nanotubes may eventually replace silicon-based devices for logic applications; but it is also well known that nanotube-based radiofrequency transistors are important as high-performance analog components in wireless systems. Key to the advance of high performance is the availability of aligned films of semiconducting nanotubes with high purity (99.999 percent semiconducting nanotubes) at the wafer scale. Scaling-up electronic purification of nanotubes is the key challenge. Recently the Illinois team developed a path to purification for grown aligned nanotubes at levels that meet these daunting requirements. This Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) award will support the work needed to scale this purification process to the wafer-scale, and integrate it into the process of record for nanotube field effect transistors in collaboration with Northrup Grumman Corporation. This work will have a great societal benefit, impacting power consumption and performance in wireless technologies, and will serve as one of the first scalable nanomanufacturing development efforts in the area. The work will provide a training platform for future engineers in this new manufacturing paradigm. Moreover this interdisciplinary effort will broaden participation of underrepresented groups in the research through use of the Summer Research Programs at Illinois and Northrup Grumman Corporation. Aligned sub-monolayer films of single walled carbon nanotubes grown by chemical vapor deposition represent a promising materials platform for high-performance electronic applications. However, film electronic purity is a critical issue. Recently the Illinois team developed a path to purification for as-grown aligned materials based on utilization of a thermal resist which serves as an etch barrier for semiconducting nanotubes during processing. The process uses nanoscale thermocapillary flows in thin organic films as a processing strategy for complete, selective removal of metallic nanotubes from aligned arrays of single walled nanotubes. Compatibility with current microelectronics fabrication tools suggests it can serve as a scalable technique for nanotube substrate purification. Microwave excitation leads to efficient, selective removal of metallic tubes via this process, enabling 100 percent purity. The research team will scale-up thermocapillary purification methods for wafer-scale manufacture and will introduce them into the transistor processing workflow at Northrup Grumman. A high volume microwave reactor will be designed, assembled, and developed. Ultimately high-performance, low-power, low noise linear carbon nanotube amplifiers will be fabricated at the wafer-scale.