Laser assisted fabrication for controlled single-walled carbon nanotube synthesis and processing

Although significant progress has been made in large scale and high quality single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) synthesis, the fabrication of SWNT-based functional devices still faces many challenges due to the lack of good methods to precisely control over SWNTs growth location, orientation, alignment, and electronic properties. Hence, development of practical methods for well-controlled SWNT-based device fabrication has drawn great interests from both academics and industry. Due to numerous advantages, laser-based techniques are applied in controlled fabrication of SWNT devices. In this paper, we first introduce the laser assisted chemical vapor deposition (LCVD) process, and then different aspects of controllability in device fabrication are described in three sections: 1) location and orientation control of SWNT channels integration using optical near-field effects; 2) alignment control of SWNTs arrays using electrical biasing polarities; 3) SWNTs electronic property control using laser-induced breakdown technique. Our experimental results show that well-organized individual SWNT channels or arrays with location, orientation, alignment, and electronic property control can be achieved through laser assisted fabrication process, which is a promising solution for the fabrication of future SWNT-based devices.