Semiconductor nanomaterials for radio frequency devices and systems

The excellent electronic, thermal and mechanical properties of semiconductor nanomaterials, ranging form single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) to GaAs nanomembranes and nanowires, together with the ability to integrate them onto a wide range of substrate types, create opportunities for their use in various areas of electronics, ranging from heterogeneously integrated systems for applications in communications to large area distributed circuits for flexible displays. In these cases, organized assemblies of these materials can provide effective thin film type semiconductors for scalable circuit integration. T his talk describes our research in this area, and highlights (1) methods for self-aligned growth of large scale, perfectly aligned arrays of perfectly linear SWNTs, (2) strategies to create and manipulate nanomembranes and nanowires of GaAs, and (3) device and circuit implementations, including high mobility transistors with GHz switching speeds, transistor radios and medium-scale digital logic circuits on flexible plastic substrates.