A carbon nanotube-based sensing element

+ ++ ++
YANG Xing
1, 2, 3
**
,ZHOU Zhao-ying
1, 2, 3
,WU Ying
1, 2, 3
,ZHANG Jin
4
,and ZHANG Ying-ying
4
1 MEMS Lab., Department of Precision Instruments & Mechanology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2 State Key Lab. of Precision Measurement Technology and Instrumentation, Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084, China
3 Micro-nano technology research center, Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084, China
4 Department of Chemistry, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
(Received 9 January 2007)
A carbon nanotube-based(CNT) sensing element is presented, which consists of substrate, insulating layer, electrodes,
carbon nanotube and measuring circuit. The sensing components are a single or array of CNTs, which are located on the two
electrodes. The CNT-based sensing element is fabricated by CVD (chemical vapor deposition)-direct-growth on micro-
electrodes. The sensing model and measurement method of electromechanical property are also presented. Finally, the
voltage-current characteristics are measured, which show that the CNT-based sensing element has good electrical properties.
CLC number: TP212.14 Document code: A Article ID: 1673-1905(2007)02-0081-04
DOI !0.!00:!!80!000?3!
The nano-materials could be classified as zero, one, two
and three dimension by their dimensionality. For example,
nano-particle and power are zero-dimensional; Nanotube and
nanowire are one-dimensional. Compared with bulk
materials, nano-materials show unique mechanical, electrical,
optical, thermal and biochemical characteristics, and cou-
pling characteristics such as electromechanical and
photoelectrical characteristics etc.. For example, Tombler
[1]
,
H.J.Dai
[2]
, and E.D.Minot
[3]
reported the remarkable electro-
mechanical properties of carbon nanotube (CNT). Z.L.Wang
[4]
et al. investigated the piezoelectric properties of ZnO
nanobelt which had higher piezoelectric coefficient than bulk
ZnO. The performance of the sensors will be improved if the
nano-materials are used for the sensing element. A device
liking MEMS pressure sensor was fabricated by R.J.Grow
[5]
,
which could measure the CNTs strain in x or y direction at
different pressure. The CNT was stick to the silicon nitride
by Vander Waals force. The experimental results showed that
the gauge factor of small-gap semiconducting (SGS) type
CNT was as large as about 850. C. Stampfer et al.
[6]
reported
on fabrication and characterization of bulk micromachined
pressure sensors based on individual single-walled carbon
nanotubes (SWNTs) as the active electromechanical trans-
ducer elements. They performed the electromechanical mea-
surements on strained metallic SWNTs adhering to a mem-
brane and found a piezoresistive gauge factor of approxi-
mately 210 for metallic SWNTs.
In this paper, we present a micro/nano combined sensing
element which single-walled carbon nanotube was used for
sensing structure. The CNT-based sensing element was fab-
ricated by CVD(chemical vapor deposition)-direct-growth
on micro-electrodes. The sensing model and measurement
method of electromechanical property were presented. The
measurement results of the voltage-current characteristics
showed that the CNT-based sensing element had good elec-
trical properties.
As shown in Fig. 1, the CNT-based sensing element con-
sists of substrate, insulating layer, electrodes, carbon nanotube
and measuring circuit. A single or array of CNTs is located
on the two electrodes. There is current flowing in the CNTs
when voltage is applied to the electrodes. Because the elec-
trical transport in the CNT will be changed when the exter-
Fig.1 The schematic diagram of CNT-based sensing
element
Electrodes
Insulating
Layer
F
F
CNT
A
V
Substrate
OPTOELECTRONICS LETTERS Vol.3 No.2, 15 Mar. 2007
* Antrag GZ 398, Ghinesisch-Deutsches Zentrum f u r Wissenscha-
ftsf o rderung.
This work is partially granted by National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (No.50505018), Specialized Research Fund for
the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20030003024)
and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant (No.
2005038068).
** Email: yangxing@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
gg Optoelectron. Lett. Vol.3 No.2
Fig.2 The process flow of the CNT-CVD-growth on Mo electrodes
Fig.3 demonstrates the SEM photographs of CNTs growth
between Mo electrodes. A bundle of CNTs connects one Mo
electrode to another Mo electrode well. The CNTs are long
enough (about 1 millimeter) and easy to grow on the
Fig.3 The SEM photographs of CNTs growth between Mo electrodes
nal signal applying to CNT is changed, the external signal
could be measured by monitoring the CNTs current. For
example, if the force F is applied to substrate, the substrate
will deform and the strain will be transferred to the elec-
trodes and insulating layer. The CNTs experience the strain
for they adhere to the electrodes. The substrates strain could
be measured by monitoring the CNTs current change when a
fixed potential is applied to the electrodes.
There are several methods for fabricating the CNT-based
sensing element, for example, CVD-controllable-growth of
CNT, chemical self-assembly, micro-manipulation, electro-
phoresis etc.. The CVD-controllable-growth has some
advantages, such as simple process, controllable, mass
productability and compatible with microelectronic process.
Here we make the device by CNT CVD-controllable-growth,
whose steps include electrodes fabrication, catalyst location,
CNT growth on the electrodes and leading wire. In our design,
the material of electrodes is Mo because it can endure the
high temperature (more than 900) in the CVD chamber.
The process steps are described as follows (Fig.2): The
substrate is a p-type silicon wafer with 2 m-thickness and
thermal-oxidization-growth silicon dioxide. The 50 nm-thick-
ness Mo electrodes are fabricated by sputtering,
photolithography, and RIE etching. Then, the catalyst is lo-
cated on the surface of silicon dioxide, and silicon chip was
placed in CVD furnace. The CNTs grow from one electrode
to another electrode by directing CNTs growth in the same
direction as the gas flows.
Mo electrode CNT
Mo electrode
CNT
electrodes. Then, the silicon chip with CNTs is stuck to a
copper sheet and is led gold wire to PC board by conductive
adhesive. Fig. 4 is the photo of the CNT-based sensing
element.
YANG et al. Optoelectron. Lett. Vol.3 No.2 gg
Fig.4 The photo of the CNT-based sensing element.
In small strain regime, the resistance of the CNT (R
tot
)
can be formulated
[3,5]
:
1 0 0 0 1
1
( ) /
/
U U U
I I I I I R R
GF
I H H H

'

(4)
where I
0
and I
1
are current of the CNT when strain are zero
and , respectively.
As shown in Fig.5, the gauge factor of the CNT-based
sensing element can be measured by experiments described
Fig.5 The schematic diagram of measuring the CNT-
based sensing elements gauge factor
When the pulling force (100 N) is applied to the CNT-
based sensing element, the x-direction strain distribution is
analyzed by ANSYS (Fig.6). The results show that the strain
of the copper sheet can be transferred to the silicon chips
surface. But the strain on the silicon chip surface is smaller
than that of the copper sheet. They are proportional and the
Fig.6 The x-direction strain distribution of the CNT-
based sensing element
2 2
1
1 exp( )
8
g
tot S
E
h
R R
e kT
t




(1)
Where R
s
is the resistance in series with the junction, |t|
2
is
the transmission through the tube, h is Planck constant, e is
electrons quantity of electricity, k is the Boltzmann constant,
T is the absolute temperature, and E
g
is the strain-dependent
band gap which is expressed by:
0 g
g g
dE
E E
d
H
H

(2)
Where E
g
0
is the band gap when strain is zero and is the
strain. According to Eq. (1) and (2), it is understandable that
the electrical property of CNT is relative to the band-gap
changes when the external force is applied to the CNT.
The electromechanical property of CNT could be evalu-
ated by gauge factor GF, which is defined as:
[ ( ) (0)] / (0) /
tot tot tot
R R R R R
GF
H
H H
'

(3)
Where R
tot
() and R
tot
(0) are the resistance of CNT when its
strain are and 0, respectively. If the current and the strain
of the CNT can be measured when the force is applied, the
gauge factor is calculated by the equation as follows:
as below. The two ends of copper sheet of the CNT-based
sensing element are clamped by a loading machine. A stan-
dard strain gauge is stuck to the backside of the copper sheet.
We start the loading machine and apply the pulling force to
the CNT-based sensing element. Simultaneously, the strain
and the current of the CNT-based sensing element are mea-
sured by the standard strain gauge and current meter,
respectively. Then, the gauge factor is obtained from Eq. (4).
F
CNT-ba sed sensing
element
F
Strain gauge
Copper sheet
Strain-gauge
instrument
Pico-
ammeter
gg Optoelectron. Lett. Vol.3 No.2
References
[1] Thomas W. Tombler, Nature, 405 (2000), 769.
[2] Jien Cao,Qian Wang, and Hongjie Dai,Physical Review letters,
90(2003), 157601-1.
[3] E.D.Minot, Yuval Yaish,and Vera Sazonova, Physical Review
letters, 90(2003), 156401-1.
[4] Min-hua Zhao, Zhong-lin Wang, and Scott X Mao, Nano
Letters, 4(2004), 587.
[5] Randal J.Grow, Applied Physics Letters, 86(2005), 093104-1.
[6] C. Stampfer, Nano Letters,6 (2006), 233.
The voltage current curves of the CNT-based sensing
element are measured when the applied force is zero. The
terminals of the picoampere meter (Model 6487, Keithley
Instruments Inc.) are connected with the CNTs of the sens-
ing element by leading wire. The current of the CNT is re-
corded when the range of the voltage is from -3 V to 3V, as
shown in Fig.7.
actual strain of the CNTs can be calculated by multiplying a
proportion coefficient to the measured strain.
Fig.7 The voltage current curves of the CNT-based
sensing element
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
-0.0000004
-0.0000002
0.0000000
0.0000002
0.0000004
0.0000006
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

/

A
Voltage / V
1
2
Curve 1 and curve 2 are ascending and descending curve,
respectively. The data are the average value of multiple
metering. The results from Fig. 7 indicate that the repeat-
ability is good. Because the CNTs are grown on the electrodes,
there is Ohm contact between the CNTs and the Mo elec-
trodes which is suitable for signal measurement.
In summary, we have designed, fabricated a CNT-based
sensing element. The sensing element is a micro/nano com-
bined structure and the CVD-controllable-growth process is
used for growing CNTs on the electrodes. A measurement
method of the sensing elements electromechanical property
is proposed and analyzed. I-V measurements on the CNT-
based sensing element have been carried out and the good
contact performance between the CNTs and Mo elements
has been proved. In our future works, we will study on the
piezoresistance property of the CNT-based sensing element.