Dekker, Cees

Much research has now been done on the properties and possible uses of carbon nanotuhes. An important center for this research has been the laboratory of Cees Dekker and his colleagues at Delft University in the Netherlands. In 1997, for example, one of Dekker s teams found that bent carbon nanotuhes can function as electric wires. Their electric behavior is very different from that of ordinary macroscopic wires, however. In these familiar-sized wires, each small increase in voltage produces a correspondingly small increase... 

Cees Dekker and students (S,J. Tans et ctl.. Nature, 393,49 (1998)) have draped a semiconducting carbon nanotube over metal electrodes that are 400 nm apart atop a silicon surface coated with silicon dioxide. A bias voltage between the electrodes provides the source and drain of an FET. The silicon serves as a gate electrode. By adjusting the magnitude of an electric held applied to the gate, current flow across the nanolube may be turned on and off. 

A single-electron transistor (SET) has been prepared by Cees Dekker and coworkers (Science, 293, 76, (2001)) with a conducting nanotube. The SET is prepared by putting two bends in a tube with the tip of an AFM. Bending causes two buckles that, at a distance of 20 nm, serves as a conductance barrier. When an appropriate voltage is applied to the gate below the barrier, electrons tunnel one at a time across the barrier. 

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