Ionic liquid gating of single-walled carbon nanotube devices with ultra-short channel length down to 10 nm

Ionic liquids enable efficient gating of materials with nanoscale morphology due to the formation a double layer that can also follow strongly vaulted surfaces. On carbon nanotubes, this lead cylindrical gate layer, allowing an ideal control drain current even at small voltages. In work, we apply ionic liquid chirality-sorted (9, 8) nanotubes bridging metallic electrodes gap sizes 20 nm and 10 nm. The single-tube devices exhibit diameter-normalized densities up 2.57 mA/μm, on-off ratios 104, subthreshold swing down 100 mV/dec. Measurements after long vacuum storage indicate hysteresis gated depends not only on voltage sweep rate polarization dynamics but charge traps in vicinity nanotube, which, turn, might act as trap states for ions. ambipolar transfer characteristics are compared calculations based Landauer–Büttiker formalism. Qualitative agreement is demonstrated, possible reasons quantitative deviations improvements model discussed. Besides being fundamental interest, results have potential relevance biosensing applications employing high-density device arrays.