Carbon nanotubes electrodes as intrinsic conductors for organic and printed electronic applications

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Carbon nanotubes are emerging amongst the most promising electronic materials due to their high carrier mobilities, simple synthesis and solution processability. These materials promise a range of potential applications such as active layers in organic optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices, sensors, and field-effect transistors. However, there is still a need to develop suitable processing methods for these materials to obtain the necessary morphologies for realizing their unique properties; especially for large-scale applications. This research proposal thus focuses on developing methods for producing thin and uniform carbon nanotube sheets exhibiting maximal optical transparencies and electrical conductivities. Up to now, the industry has relied on a single transparent conductor, indium tin oxide (ITO) a transparent conducting oxide, for most commercial applications. While ITO has been suitable for existing technologies it was proven to be less than ideal for use in the emerging field of organic optoelectronics. Our team has recently developed a simple room temperature deposition technique to fabricate thin and flexible carbon nanotubes sheets exhibiting excellent optical transparencies and electrical conductivities. These sheets have been used to show for the first time that CNT electrodes can be used as hole injecting anodes for high performance small molecule OLEDs. These results convincingly demonstrate that novel carbon nanotube anodes are a viable alternative to transparent conducting oxides. We will explore further the CNT sheet fabrication process to make it scalable and well adapted for printing SS electronics. A robust chemical approach together with an increase in the CNT sheet conductivity and transparency will be developed for SS device fabrication. We believe this approach will produce SS devices exhibiting performances superior to traditional ITO based devices. It will also provide new functional materials that could be useful for other electronic applications. Given the ubiquitous use of transparent conductors in optoelectronic appliances, from touch-screens and flat panel displays to photovoltaic cells, the current proposal has wide ranging impact on the development of future consumer electronics.