'Nanonets' yield small-to-medium-scale ICs

摘要

Researchers have overcome a major obstacle in pro-ducing transistors from networks of carbon nano-tubes, a technology that could make it possible to print circuits on plastic sheets. The so-called "nanonet" technology may be used for applications including flexible displays and an electronic skin that would cover an entire aircraft to monitor crack formation. Professors Ashraf Alam and Kaushik Roy at Purdue University together with University of Illinois researchers Professor John A. Rogers and Assistant Professor Moonsub Shim, produced carbon-based semiconductors consisting of sub-monolayer, random networks of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) to yield small- to medium-scale integrated digital circuits, including inverters, NOR and NAND gates, and 4-bit row decoders with nearly 100 transistors.