The performance of in situ grown Schottky-barrier single wall carbon nanotube field-effect transistors

Electrical transport measurements were used to study device behavior that results from the interplay of defects and inadvertent contact variance that develops in as-grown semiconducting single wall carbon nanotube devices with nominally identical Au contacts. The transport measurements reveal that as-grown nanotubes contain defects that limit the performance of field-effect transistors with ohmic contacts. In Schottky-barrier field-effect transistors the device performance is dominated by the Schottky barrier and the nanotube defects have little effect. We also observed strong rectifying behavior attributed to extreme contact asymmetry due to the different nanoscale roughness of the gold contacts formed during nanotube growth.