Quantitative analysis of hysteresis in carbon nanotube field-effect devices

The authors present a model to analyze hysteresis in transfer characteristics (TCs) of single-wall carbon nanotube field-effect transistors, based on capacitive charging of the surrounding dielectric by charges injected out of the nanotube. The model identifies the extent and time scale of the hysteresis and correctly describes the dependence of the magnitude of hysteresis on common experimental parameters. The authors propose and experimentally establish a "time-decay" experiment for obtaining accurate device properties in hysteresis-affected devices without actually measuring TCs. The authors further show that values obtained by this method can be used to precisely predict TCs for the same device under different experimental parameters. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.