Tiny Transistor Gets a Good Sorting Out

摘要

For electronics researchers, carbon nano-tubes are like opera divas-full of power and headaches. The tiny, all-carbon tubes carry oodles of electric current for their size, and they can behave as either metals or semiconductors depending on their atomic arrangement. Electronic devices such as transistors and wires are best made with either semiconducting or metallic tubes, not both-yet, when produced, carbon nano-tubes come out as a mix. Researchers have devised ways to separate and pattern different types of tubes. But so far, those schemes have been complex and hard to scale up. Now a California team may have hit upon a simple solution.