| Single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) devices were fabricated and annealed in ultra high vacuum (UHV) with simultaneous electrical characterization. As one-dimensional crystals with nanometer scale diameters and up to meter scale lengths, SWNTs offer a unique opportunity to probe 1D transport in mesoscopic electronics. Furthermore, all of the atoms in SWNTs are surface atoms which means that the electronic properties can be examined and tailored using the well-developed tools of surface chemistry. However, electronic resistances and noise for technologically relevant small-diameter SWNT devices are too high for commercial applications.;In this work, intrinsic and extrinsic sources of scattering in SWNTs were examined by heating SWNT field effect transistors in UHV with while monitoring changes in the devices' resistance, transconductance, and conductance fluctuations. The effects of the contact interface were studied by varying the electrode metal, including palladium, titanium, and platinum contacts. It was found that metal-SWNT contact interfaces are the primary scatterers in devices as fabricated, but the contact resistance can be greatly reduced by annealing to a limit that depends primarily on the surface chemistry of the electrode metal and the geometry of the interface. Secondary sources of scattering include surface adsorbates on the electrodes and substrate, sub-strate oxide phonons and SWNT phonons. Adsorbates are the primary source of 1/f conductance noise, followed by the electrode interface. Annealing devices in UHV was found to reduce the contact resistance, noise, and device to device inhomogeneity. Graphene, formed through catalysis on the Pt surface during the anneal, was found to make the best contact to SWNTs, rather than the conventional Pd, Ti, and Pt, both in terms of contact resistance and noise. |
