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Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising candidates for transistors and interconnects for nanoelectronic circuits. Although CNTs intrinsically have excellent electrical conductivity, the large contact resistance at the interface between CNT and metal hinders its practical application. Here, we show that electrical contact to the CNT is substantially improved using a graphitic interfacial layer catalyzed by a Ni layer. The p-type semiconducting CNT with graphitic contact exhibits high on-state conductance at room temperature and a steep subthreshold swing in a back-gate configuration. We also show contact improvement to the semiconducting CNTs with different capping metals. To study the role of the graphitic interfacial layer in the contact stack, the capping metal and Ni catalyst were selectively removed and replaced with new metal pads deposited by evaporation and without further annealing. Good electrical contact to the semiconducting CNTs was still preserved after the new metal replacement, indicating that the contact improvement is attributed to the presence of the graphitic interfacial layer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There has been a strong demand for developing an ultradense and low-power nonvolatile memory technology. In this paper, we present a carbon-based resistive random access memory device with a carbon nanotube (CNT) electrode. An amorphous carbon layer is sandwiched between the fast-diffusing top metal electrode and the bottom CNT electrode, exhibiting a bipolar switching behavior. The use of the CNT electrode can substantially reduce the size of the active device area. We also demonstrate a carbon-based complementary resistive switch (CRS) consisting of two back-to-back connected memory cells, providing a route to reduce the sneak current in the cross-point memory. The bit information of the CRS cell is stored in a high-resistance state, thus reducing the power consumption of the CRS memory cell. This paper provides valuable early data on the effect of electrode size scaling down to nanometer size. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Carbon nanotube (CNT) has a potential to be used as nanoscale transmission lines and as high-performance passive components in nanoelectronics. In this letter, we discuss single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) that were grown using a chemical-vapor deposition technique. Both the dc and ac two-terminal resistances were measured and analyzed. The transmission properties of the SWNTs were shown by comparing the S parameters of a device with CNTs with those of a device without a CNT. The radio-frequency characterization of the CNTs was carried out using the network analyzer to frequency of 20 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]