Microscopy Studies of Carbon Nanotubes/Ferroelectric Composites for Microelectronics

Abstract

Top-down approaches for continuous scaling-down of devices and components in semiconductor industries is getting increasingly difficult and expensive, and thus bottom–up strategies, e.g., growth of functional nano-structures using nanowires or nanotubes are being explored rather than patterning and etching. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are an interesting option under consideration due to their extraordinary physical and electrical properties that make them suitable for microelectronic applications, such as, semiconductor field-effect-transistors (FET) and capacitors. In recent years, the fabrication of one-dimension (1D) ferroelectric (FE) nanostructures have been investigated as a capacitor for future 3D memories, however several difficulties need to be overcome in particular fabrication and characterization. In this work, the fabrication of ferroelectrics (FE) (e.g., Pb_1-xZr_xTiO₃ (PZT) and BaTiO₃ (BT)) multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) composites were synthesised by chemical solution deposition (CSD) method, namely sol gel. Later, the composites were investigated using scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy facilities and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in addition to X Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), to address the compatibility between FE and CNTs.