Patterned growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes on full 4-inch wafers

Patterned growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) is achieved on full 4-in. SiO2/Si wafers. Catalytic islands with high uniformity over the entire wafer are obtained by a deep ultraviolet photolithography technique. Growth by chemical vapor deposition of methane is found to be very sensitive to the amount of H2 co-flow. Understanding of the chemistry enables the growth of high quality SWNTs from massive arrays (107–108) of well-defined surface sites. The scale up in patterned nanotube growth shall pave the way to large-scale molecular wire devices.