Best of both worlds

A team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York has created hybrid structures that combine the best properties of carbon nanotubes and metal nanowires.

The new structures could help overcome some of the key hurdles to using carbon nanotubes in computer chips, displays, sensors, and many other electronic devices.

The high conductivity of carbon nanotubes makes them promising materials for a wide variety of electronic applications, but techniques to attach individual nanotubes to metal contacts have proven challenging. The new approach allows the precise attachment of carbon nanotubes to individual metal pins, offering a practical solution to the problem of using carbon nanotubes as interconnects and devices in computer chips.

‘This technique allows us to bridge different pieces of the nanoelectronics puzzle, taking us a step closer to the realisation of nanotube-based electronics,’ said Fung Suong Ou, a graduate student in materials science and electrical engineering at Rensselaer.