RF devices written with carbon nanotube ink on paper

摘要

Carbon nanotubes are expected to produce a breakthrough in the entire microwave domain due to their amazing properties such as high mobility, huge Young modulus, and very large density currents. In reality, up to now there are only few carbon nanotube RF circuits with performances that overcome the existing microwave devices based on semiconductors or fabricated in other technologies. The reason is that there are many technological difficulties related to nano-technologies, which are still immature in comparison with standard semiconductor technologies developed in the last half of a century. Therefore, nonconventional technologies, such as bottom-up approaches, are expected to play a considerable role in the development of RF carbon nanotube devices. The role of this paper is to show that simple RF devices such as tunable resistances or reactances, can be written with a carbon nanotube ink on normal paper to be used in passive tags or simple radio configurations.