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

从历史上看，微电子行业一直推动着集成电路技术的发展，缩小了硅晶体管的尺寸，降低了它们的功耗和成本。对于卫星技术等战略电子应用，先进材料的开发是必不可少的。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设备最终可能会在逻辑应用中取代硅基设备；但众所周知，基于纳米管的射频晶体管在无线系统中作为高性能模拟元件非常重要。提高高性能的关键是在晶片规模上获得高纯度(99.999%的半导体纳米管)的定向半导体纳米管薄膜。扩大纳米管电子提纯的规模是关键挑战。最近，伊利诺伊州的团队开发了一种方法，可以在满足这些令人望而生畏的要求的水平上对生长的定向纳米管进行纯化。这项学术与工业联系机会(GOALI)奖将支持将这种提纯工艺扩大到晶片规模所需的工作，并与诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司合作，将其整合到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努力之一。这项工作将为未来工程师在这一新的制造模式中提供培训平台。此外，这种跨学科的努力将通过使用伊利诺伊州和诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司的夏季研究计划，扩大代表不足的群体对研究的参与。化学气相沉积法制备的单壁碳纳米管定向亚单层膜是一种很有前途的高性能电子应用材料平台。然而，胶片的电子纯度是一个关键问题。最近，伊利诺伊州的研究小组开发了一种对生长的定向材料进行提纯的方法，这种方法基于热阻的使用，热阻在加工过程中充当半导体纳米管的腐蚀屏障。该方法使用薄膜中的纳米级热毛细管流动作为一种处理策略，从排列的单壁纳米管阵列中完全、选择性地去除金属纳米管。与目前微电子制造工具的兼容性表明，它可以作为一种可扩展的纳米管衬底提纯技术。通过这一过程，微波激发可以高效、选择性地去除金属管，从而实现100%的纯度。研究小组将扩大用于晶片规模制造的热毛细管净化方法，并将它们引入诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司的晶体管加工工作流程。将设计、组装和开发一台大容量微波反应堆。最终，高性能、低功耗、低噪声的线性碳纳米管放大器将在晶片规模上制造出来。

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.