Ultra-Low Noise Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Transistors

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that intermediate-sized multiwalled carbon nanotube transistors exhibit ultra-low noise levels, comparable to single-walled nanotubes, due to intrinsic charge trap fluctuations, making them promising for low-noise nanoelectronics.

Contribution

The paper provides the first experimental noise analysis of intermediate-sized quasi-ballistic MWCNT devices, revealing their low noise characteristics and explaining the noise origin with a ballistic charge noise model.

Findings

Noise is two orders of magnitude lower than in SWCNTs.

Noise shows no length dependence within studied range.

Ballistic charge noise model explains gate dependence better.

Abstract

We report an experimental noise study of intermediate sized quasi ballistic semiconducting multiwalled carbon nanotube (IS-MWCNT) devices. The noise is two orders of magnitude lower than in singlewalled nanotubes (SWCNTs) and has no length dependence within the studied range. In these channel limited devices with small or negligible Schottky barriers the noise is shown to originate from the intrinsic potential fluctuations of charge traps in the gate dielectric. The gate dependence of normalized noise can be explained better using ballistic the charge noise model rather than diffusive McWhorter model. The results indicate that the noise properties of IS-MWCNTs are closer to SWCNTs than thicker MWCNTs. These results can be utilized in future to analyze noise in other purely ballistic nanoscale devices.