A recent addition to research of Beth Parks has been the study of the high frequency electrical response of carbon nanotubes. Part of this work is being done at Cornell Nanofabrication facility, since in order to measure the response of a single carbon nanotube, it must be incorporated into a microfabricated circuit.
The circuit shown below is being
patterned by Chris Hall '03.
The first step is to deposit catalyst
pads at the edges of the 5-um gap shown above. This has been done already, as
shown below. The width of the picture is 20 microns.
Then we grow the nanotubes so that they
establish a link in between the two pads. This has also been done. A picture of
the nanotubes coming off the edge of one of the pads is shown below. The width
of the picture is 5 microns.
This work is being done by Chris Hall '03, following mask fabrication in the summer of 2002 by Sunit Sindurakar '05.
A parallel project consists of the study of the transmission line in a circuit similar to the one above, but without the nanotubes. This work was begun by Mike Fine '02 and it is being continued by Alex Qian '03.
This work is funded by an award from the National Science Foundation grant for Engineering Research Centers “Center for nanoscale systems in information technologies.” This work involves a large collaboration based at Cornell University, headed by Robert Burham (Sept. 2001 – Aug. 2006).
[The background picture is a picture of nanotubes deposited on a substrate. Photo taken by Chris Hall '03]