ABSTRACT
The possibility of combining carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with on-chip integrated circuits (ICs) and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) enables many applications of CNTs in devices, including physical, chemical, and biological sensors, as well as nanotube-based transistors. The authors demonstrate a process suitable for locally synthesizing and integrating CNTs on polysilicon structures at ambient temperature, thus showing compatibility with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)/MEMS technology. To get high-quality CNTs, it is very important to control the synthesis temperature. The method of controlling the synthesis temperature, by a feedback control to keep the supplied electrical power constant, tolerates the change in resistivity of polysilicon at elevated temperatures, thus keeping the synthesis process stable and well controlled. The authors present the local synthesis and direct integration of CNTs on polysilicon microstructures fabricated from a commercial process, thus investigating the applicability for the CNT direct integration on a realistic device platform. CNTs grown on a separate wafer can be transferred to the active wafer.
