Fabrication of carbon nanotube diode with atomic force microscopy manipulation

We presented a controllable yet simple approach for fabricating an air-stable single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) diode with the atomic force microscopy (AFM) manipulation technique. The AFM tip was utilized to create an asymmetric Schottky barrier at the two contacts of the SWNTs field effect transistors (FETs) by selectively modifying the tube-metal interaction or the contact length. Air-stable SWNTs diodes with rectification ratios of up to 10(4) were generated with this approach. We also demonstrated that the tube-metal interaction and the tube-metal contact length played an important role in determining the Schottky barrier at the tube-metal interface.