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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Honolulu, HI, United States, 11/17/2006 - Carbon nanotube-based devices can be a promising substitute for classical silicon-based devices, which are known to be very fragile against proton radiations..
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The electrical properties of CNTs are extremely sensitive to defects which can be introduced during the growth, by mechanical strain, or by irradiation with energetic particles such as electrons, heavy ions, alpha-particles, and protons. When highly energetic particles collide, a latchup, electrical interference, charging, sputtering, erosion, and puncture of the target device can occur. Therefore the information on the effects of various types of high energetic irradiation on CNTs and other nanomaterials will be important in developing radiation-robust devices and circuits of nanomaterials under aerospace environment. As a result, degradation of the device performance and lifetime or even a system failure of the underlying electronics may happen. Researchers in South Korea conducted a systematic study of the effects of proton irradiation on the electrical properties of CNT network field effect transistor (FET) devices showing metallic or semiconducting behaviors. The most important outcome of this work is that no significant change in the electrical properties of CNT-based FET was observed, even after high-energy proton beam irradiated directly on the device. This result show that CNT-based devices can be a promising substitute for classical silicon-based devices, which are known to be very fragile against proton radiations.
It has been reported previously that electronic devices became more radiation tolerant when their dimensions are reduced.For example, multi-quantum well or quantum dot devices can be tens or hundreds times more radiation tolerant than conventional bulk devices. It even was shown that quantum dot/CNT-based photovoltaic devices were five orders of magnitude more resistant than conventional bulk solar cells.
"Although there have been many reports on the potential utilizations in aerospace environment, as far as we know, ours is the first study that the CNT-electronic devices can be used to overcome ever-lasting fragility of the silicon-based devices in highly harmful nature" Dr. Takhee Lee describes the core finding of the study to Nanowerk.
Read the full article on the Nanowerk website.
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