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Javey, Ali; Guo, Jing; Wang, Qian; Lundstrom, Mark; Dai, Hongjie

Nature (London, United Kingdom) (2003), 424(6949), 654-657 CODEN: NATUAS; ISSN: 0028-0836. English.

A common feature of the single-walled carbon-nanotube field-effect transistors fabricated to date has been the presence of a Schottky barrier at the nanotube-metal junctions. These energy barriers severely limit transistor conductance in the 'ON' state, and reduce the current delivery capability - a key determinant of device performance. Here, the authors show that by contacting semiconducting single-walled nanotubes by palladium, a noble metal with high work function and good wetting interactions with nanotubes, greatly reduces or eliminates the barriers for transport through the valence band of the nanotubes. In-situ modification of the electrode work function by hydrogen is carried out to shed light on the nature of the contacts. With Pd contacts, the ON' states of semiconducting nanotubes can behave like ohmically contacted ballistic metallic tubes, exhibiting room-temperature conductance near the ballistic transport limit of 4e2/h, high current-carrying capability (.apprx.25 .mu.A per tube), and Fabry-Perot interferences at low temps. Under high voltage operation, the current saturation appears to be set by backscattering of the charge carriers by optical phonons. High-performance ballistic nanotube field-effect transistors with zero or slightly neg. Schottky barriers are thus realized.