Highly individual SWCNTs for high performance thin film electronics

Abstract We report a continuous floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition synthesis of highly individual single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) for high performance transparent conducting films (TCF). Active feedback dilution of ferrocene-based catalyst vapor leads to an almost complete elimination of SWCNT bundling and a substantial increase in SWCNT lengths via the suppression of bundling-induced growth termination. The fabricated uniform TCFs exhibit sheet resistances of 89 Ω/sq. at 90% transmittance. This was further improved by micro-patterning, resulting in a sheet resistance of 69 Ω/sq. at 97% transmittance – the highest reported for any carbon nanotube TCF – and highly competitive with commercial indium-tin-oxide-TCFs. Furthermore, we demonstrate that thin film transistors fabricated from these highly individual SWCNTs reach charge carrier mobilities up to 100 cm 2 V −1 s −1 and ON/OFF-ratios up to 10 6 .