Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Flexible Electronics and Sensors

This article reviews the use of electronic quality single-walled carbon nanotubes grown via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) approaches at high temperatures as building blocks for fabricating flexible field-effect devices, such as thin-film transistors (TFTs) and chemical sensors. Dry transfer printing technique is developed for forming films of CVD nanotubes on low-temperature plastic substrates. Examples of TFTs with the use of nanotubes and thin dielectrics and hydrogen sensors with the use of nanotubes decorated with palladium nanoparticles are discussed in detail to demonstrate the promising potentiality of single-walled carbon nanotubes for building high performance flexible devices, which can find applications where traditional devices on rigid substrates are not suitable.