(Invited) 2D Liquid Crystals of Aligned Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes at Liquid-Liquid Interfaces

Carbon nanotubes transport more electricity per area than silicon and more easily switch between on and off states with lower voltage, making them exciting for future, fast, low-energy logic and high-speed, linear RF devices. For nanotubes to offer the highest performance, they must be aligned in one direction in a single layer so that electricity can quickly and efficiently flow through them. This has been a long-standing challenge. This talk will present on recent, yet-to-be published advances at the University of Wisconsin on assembling and aligning dense arrays of polymer wrapped semiconducting carbon nanotubes via 2D liquid crystal (2D-LC) phenomena at liquid-liquid interfaces. Topics will include: (1) the direct visualization of 2D-LCs of nanotubes at liquid-liquid interfaces via in situ polarized optical microscopy; (2) the assembly of nanotubes at density of > 250 nanotubes μm -1 at liquid-liquid interfaces; (3) the post-alignment and post-deposition removal of polymer wrapper via oxidation at room-temperature; and (4) field effect transistor studies incorporating all of the above.