ABSTRACT
This chapter represents the state of the art in wiring of nanostructures. It reviews the technical features of these approaches and describes their potential for introduction into high-volume manufacturing processes. The applications of electrically active nanostructures are so numerous that this topic deserves particular attention, especially from the point of view of nanomanufacturing. While the electronics industry has considerable experience with manufacturing contacts to “top-down” fabricated nanodevices in, for example, Pentium chips, the ability to contact individual nanostructures synthesized by emerging vapor, chemical, and biological techniques at high rates and yields remains to be developed. The ability to fabricate contacts during the synthesis of nanostructures possesses several distinct advantages. It is possible to prefabricate the contacts on a substrate and then simply introduce the substrate into the process tool required for nanostructure synthesis. The yield of devices based on one-dimensional nanostructures may be increased by the use of alignment techniques that provide preferred orientation for high aspect ratio nanostructures.
