Automated robotic deposition system for manufacturing nano devices

Abstract

This paper presents a novel automated manufacturing process for mass production of nano devices from advanced material such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs). CNTs have been found to be a promising and advanced material for nanoelectronics due to their size and excellent mechanical and electrical properties. Conventional electronic devices replaced by CNT are possibly to be miniaturized, and CNT based nano devices can provide better performance. Therefore, researchers have focused on developing different methods to manufacture CNT based nano devices in recent years. Since the size of CNTs is in nano scale, traditional robotic manipulation cannot be applied. Electrical assembly of CNT based devices is one of the promising methods to manipulate CNT to desired position. Building nano device by a single CNT is challenging, therefore, most people have concentrated on manipulating bundled CNTs. However, the electrical properties of bundled CNTs are difficult to control. As a result, device cannot benefit from quantum properties of a single CNT. Therefore, an automated process for manufacturing single CNT based nano devices is necessary for this application. A CNT deposition system is developed to manipulate a single CNT across microelectrodes precisely and repeatedly by using dielectrophoresis (DEP). Moreover, certain types of CNTs can be selected by using a micro chamber to filter other unnecessary types of CNTs. The system can potentially be used to fabricate an array of CNT based devices, and a fast and feasible batch nano assembly of consistent nano devices can be achieved. ©2007 IEEE.