Direct Synthesis of Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Toward High-Performance Electronics

The large-scale synthesis of high-purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNTs) plays a crucial role in fabricating high-performance and multiapplication-scenario electronics. This work develops a straightforward, continuous, and scalable method to synthesize high-purity and individual s-SWCNTs with small-diameters distribution (≈1 nm). It is believed that the water and carbon dioxide resulting from the decomposition of isopropanol act as oxidizing agents and selectively etch metallic SWCNTs, hence enhancing the production of s-SWCNTs. The performance of individual-SWCNTs field effect transistors confirms the high abundance of s-SWCNTs, presenting a mean mobility of 376 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and a high mobility of 2725 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ with an on-current to off-current (I_on/I_off) ratio as high as 2.51 × 10⁷. Moreover, thin-film transistors based on the as-synthesized SWCNTs exhibit excellent performance with a mean mobility of 9.3 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and I_on/I_off ratio of 1.3× 10⁵, respectively, verifying the enrichment of s-SWCNTs. This work presents a simple and feasible route for the sustainable synthesis of high-quality s-SWCNTs for electronic devices.