Zhang Z Y, et al. Chin Sci Bull January (2012) Vol.57 No.2-3 137
with the CNT (Figure 1(a)). The properties of Sc-contacted
CNT FETs are shown in Figure 1. The device is an n-type
FET having an ON state at high V
gs
(~10 V) and near-ballistic
ON-state conductance G
on
=
0.49G
0
(G
0
=
4e
2
/h) at 250 K
(Figure 1(b)). The ON-state conductance increases with
decreasing temperature and reaches G
on
=
0.62G
0
at 4.3 K.
The metallic-like temperature dependence of the ON-state
conductance and the almost perfectly linear I
ds
-V
ds
charac-
teristics suggest that electron injection from the Sc electrode
into the conductance band of the CNT is effectively barrier
free; i.e. Sc forms an ohmic contact with the n-channel (i.e.,
the conduction band) of the CNT. At low temperature (4.3 K,
Figure 1(c)), the I
on
/I
off
ratio exceeds 10
9
for V
ds
=
0.1 V.
Although Sc is an ideal electrode metal for n-type CNT
FETs, its exorbitant price and scarcity will prevent large-
scale applications in the future. Yttrium (Y) was then used
to substitute Sc as the contacts for CNT FETs. The perfor-
mance of the Y-contacted CNT FET was compared directly
with that of the Sc-contacted CNT FET, with the FETs fab-
ricated on the same SWCNT adjacent to each other, and
was found that the Y-contacted CNT FETs outperform in
many ways the Sc-contacted CNT FETs [32]. Since Y is
extremely cost effective and widely used in industry, it is
expected that Y-contacted devices will be more suitable for
fabricating large-scale integrated nanoelectronic circuits.
2 Pushing n-type CNT FETs to their
performance limits
In the two years following the realization of p-type ohmic
contacts for CNT FETs, Dai and coworkers [33,34] pushed
the performance of the p-type CNT FET to its limit by
combining ohmic contacts and a high-k gate insulator.
The development of n-type FETs lagged far behind the
development of p-type FETs. Traditionally, n-type CNT
FETs were fabricated through chemical doping such as
doping with K [35]. However, there were two obvious dis-
advantages of chemically doping CNTs. Firstly, it is uncon-
trollable and unstable in air. Secondly, the doped atom in
the CNT reduces carrier mobility by introducing scattering.
In 2005, researchers at Intel benchmarked CNT devices
of the day with some key general parameters including gate
delay and the energy-delay product [36]. The intrinsic gate
delay represents the speed potential of a device, and the
energy-delay product indicates its power dissipation. They
found that the p-type CNT devices outperformed the silicon
p-MOS in terms of both speed and power dissipation.
Figure 1 Back-gated SWCNT-based n-type CNT FET. (a) Transmission electron microscope image showing uniformly Sc-coated CNTs of various diame-
ters; insert: scanning electron microscope image of the device; the bar is 300 nm in length. (b) Low-bias conductance G vs gate voltage V
gs
for an SWCNT
with diameter d
=
2.0 nm and length L
=
300 nm. (c) Transfer characteristics of the same device as in (b) for different bias at 4.3 K. Inset: schematic ON- and
OFF-state band diagrams for a device with no Schottky barrier against electron injection into the conduction band of the CNT. (d) I
ds
-V
ds
curves for different
V
gs
at 4.3 K [31].