Our paper demonstrates for the first time the realization of logic circuits made of carbon nanotubes and represents an important step towards nanoelectronics.

Single component devices made of nanotubes have been fabricated for several years by different groups, but they were transistors with poor performances. It was not clear, at this time, if circuits made of nanotubes could work or not. We have fabricated a nanotube transistor with a new layout that shows favorable characteristics to be integrated in circuits.

I was working as a post-doc in Cees Dekker’s group in Delft. We wanted to develop a new kind of nanotube transistor in order to do basic research on nanotube transport. Nothing very exciting came about, but we saw these good transistor performances and we changed the direction of our research.

  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

We have developed a nanotube device that features gates made of Al that are insulated from the nanotube by an oxide layer of only a few nm thickness. This enables an excellent capacitive coupling between the gate and the nanotube and provides a large gain (>10). The layout features also a gate that couples only one transistor and allows for integration of multiple devices on a single chip. We demonstrate with these devices logic circuits using single molecules.

Adrian Bachtold
Chargé de recherche CNRS
LPMC - Ecole Normale Superieure
Paris, France