Photoswitching in Azafullerene Encapsulated Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube FET Devices

Abstract

The photoinduced electrical transport properties of C(59)N@SWNTs are investigated by assembling them into FET devices. Our findings demonstrate that azafullerene molecules inside SWNTs make nanotube FET devices very sensitive to UV light exposure by the decrease of source-drain current upon light exposure. The photoswitching effect is found to be dependent on wavelengths of light and becomes negligible when the wavelength is increased to 480 nm. The photoinduced electron transfer is proposed to take place inside C(59)N@SWNTs due to the specific electronic structure of C(59)N, the heteromolecule bonding of which is sensitive to light.

C59N Peapods Sensing the Temperature

“…Figure 4 shows the transfer curves of a C 59 N peapod FET device, in which the I DS - V G curves are recorded for the C 59 N@SWNT-FET in both dark and upon 400 nm light illumination for the two temperatures at 300 K and 10 K, respectively. Obviously, the prominent response of the device at room temperature to light is the decrease of transconductance, and the light irradiation results in ∼95% decrease in conductance (Figure 4(a)), which has been mentioned in our previous report [12]. However, at low temperatures such as 10 K, a different photoresponse phenomenon is observed in the transport property of C 59 N peapod FET device under light illumination, as shown in Figure 4(b), and the source-drain current displays a several times increase under the same light illumination, which is the exactly opposite phenomenon to that observed at 300 K. It is necessary to mention that such a phenomenon has never been observed in pristine SWNT FET devices.…”

“…The electronic transport properties of C 59 N@SWNTs are investigated by using them as the current channels of field-effect transistor (FET) devices [11,12]. First the C 59 N@SWNTs sample is ultrasonically dispersed in N,N-dimethylformamide and then spincoated onto FET substrates, each of which consists of Au source-drain electrodes with a channel length of 500 nm on a SiO 2 insulating layer.…”

Electrical transport properties of boron-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes

“…Therefore, SWNTs hold enormous promise in a wide variety of electronic applications such as field-effect transistor (FET), 1,2 nano pn junction, [3][4][5] sensors. 6,7 There is a great challenge in tailoring their electronic properties because SWNTs may behave as metals, p-type or n-type semiconductors depending on the diameter, chirality, and the addition of dopants. 8 It has been demonstrated that doping of boron (B) into SWNTs is recently considered as one of the effective approaches to modify the intrinsic electronic properties of SWNTs and to construct functional nanodevices.…”

Considerably improved photovoltaic performance of carbon nanotube-based solar cells using metal oxide layers

“…Carbon nanotubes with cylinder-like, one-dimensional structures have attracted much interest for photovoltaic applications because of their electronic and optical properties [8][9][10][11] , including the ability to tune their band gaps over a wide wavelength range 12 , high carrier mobilities along their one-dimensional axes 13,14 and high optical transparency values with low resistivity 15 . Indeed, a variety of photovoltaic devices using carbon nanotubes such as carbon nanotube-based organic solar cells 16 , photoelectrochemical cells 17 , dye-sensitized solar cells 18 and carbon nanotube/Si solar cells 19,20 have been reported.…”