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The dynamics of polymerized carbon nanotubes in semiconductor polymer electronics and electro-mechanical sensing

Sandeep V Anand and D Roy Mahapatra

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Polymerized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising materials for polymer-based electronics and electro-mechanical sensors. The advantage of having a polymer nanolayer on CNTs widens the scope for functionalizing it in various ways for polymer electronic devices. However, in this paper, we show for the first time experimentally that, due to a resistive polymer layer having carbon nanoparticle inclusions and polymerized carbon nanotubes, an interesting dynamics can be exploited. We first show analytically that the relative change in the resistance of a single isolated semiconductive nanotube is directly proportional to the axial and torsional dynamic strains, when the strains are small, whereas, in polymerized CNTs, the viscoelasticity of the polymer and its effective electrical polarization give rise to nonlinear effects as a function of frequency and bias voltage. A simplified formula is derived to account for these effects and validated in the light of experimental results. CNT–polymer-based channels have been fabricated on a PZT substrate. Strain sensing performance of such a one-dimensional channel structure is reported. For a single frequency modulated sine pulse as input, which is common in elastic and acoustic wave-based diagnostics, imaging, microwave devices, energy harvesting, etc, the performance of the fabricated channel has been found to be promising.


PACS

85.35.Kt Nanotube devices

62.40.+i Anelasticity, internal friction, stress relaxation, and mechanical resonances

81.40.Jj Elasticity and anelasticity, stress-strain relations

61.41.+e Polymers, elastomers, and plastics

Subjects

Soft matter, liquids and polymers

Electronics and devices

Condensed matter: structural, mechanical & thermal

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 14 (8 April 2009)

Received 29 November 2008, in final form 11 February 2009

Published 18 March 2009



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