Highly-Oriented Arrays of Carbon Nanotubes on SiO2 Substrate Produced by Controllable Pulse Gas Alignment with Channel Limitation

Horizontal arrays of carbon nanotubes on SiO2 substrate are produced by a very simple method, namely controllable pulse gas alignment with channel limitation, where a micro droplet of well-dispersed carbon nanotubes suspension is pipetted in the channel on SiO2 substrate, and then a pulse gas with certain pressure is applied directly to the suspension-substrate-air interface of the micro droplet to align the carbon nanotubes. Experimental results show that highly-oriented arrays of both multi-walled carbon nanotube and single-walled carbon nanotube are produced on the SiO2 substrate in the channel region with excellent straightening effect and submicron-meter distribution density. After the alignment process, a modified nanomanipulation system based on atomic force microscope is used to cut or locally bend the carbon nanotubes for further controlling the size and shape or even changing the electrical property of the carbon nanotubes array. With microelectrodes deposited on the CNTs arrays, they can be used to fabricate CNTs electronic device arrays or even be used as shadow masks to fabricate nanometer-width electrodes arrays with sub-micron scale distribution.