Synthesis of Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Arrays and Their Application in Single Molecular electronics

Molecular electronics utilize molecular as building blocks to fabricate electronic components. Due to the advantage of its size, molecular electronics has been an attractive candidate for future electronics for a long time. However, there are major challenges to be solved before single molecular electronic device could be used widely. One of these challenges is the lack of high yield, low cost fabrication technique. Carbon nanotubes are new materials with great electronic conductivity and small diameter, etc. They are great candidate for the electrode of single molecular electronic devices. A great effort of this thesis has been devoted into the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of carbon nanotube, especially the surface aligned carbon nanotube array on miscut quartz surface. A state of art recipe to synthesize carbon nanotube array on quartz with promising cleanliness, density, alignment and nanotube length has been developed. Two novel fabrication processes were proposed and tested to fabricate electrode for single molecule electronic devices with carbon nanotube array. In addition, a fabrication process to create large amount of identical length of carbon nanotubes was introduced and studied