Langmuir-Blodgett assembly of densely aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes from bulk materials

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) exhibit advanced electrical and surface properties useful for high performance nanoelectronics. Important to future manufacturing of nanotube circuits is a large-scale assembly of SWNTs into aligned forms. Despite progress in assembly and oriented synthesis, pristine SWNTs in aligned and close-packed form remain elusive and needed for high-current, -speed, and -density devices through collective operations of parallel SWNTs. Here, we develop a Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method achieving monolayers of aligned SWNTs with dense packing, central to which is a noncovalent polymer functionalization by poly(m-phenylenevinylene-co-2,5-dioctoxy-p-phenylenevinylene) (PmPV) imparting high solubility and stability of SWNTs in an organic solvent 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE). Pressure cycling or "annealing" during LB film compression reduces hysteresis and facilitates high-degree alignment and packing of SWNTs characterized by microscopy and polarized Raman spectroscopy. The monolayer SWNTs are readily patterned for device integration by microfabrication, enabling the highest currents (similar to 3mA) through the narrowest regions packed with aligned SWNTs thus far.