Surface‐Acoustic‐Wave‐Enhanced Alignment of Thiolated Carbon Nanotubes on Gold Electrodes

Single-walled carbon nanotubes were chemically treated to attach thiol groups at defects sites. The selective bonding of thiolated tubes has been verified using 10-nm-sized Au particles. Using a surface acoustic wave (SAW), the thiolated carbon nanotubes are aligned on prepatterned Au structures on piezoelectric substrates (see Figure). Due to the good adhesion of the thiolated tubes to Au, an alignment with an averaged deviation of 0° to 20° with respect to the propagation direction of the SAW has been shown.