"NANOTECH: Carbon nanotube, molecule joined to create transistor"

Columbia University researchers have successfully married a carbon nanotube with an organic molecule, creating what they said is the world's first hybrid carbon-nanotube/molecular transistor. The experimental device enabled the chemical reaction in an application-specific organic molecule to be harnessed by the high carrier-mobility of carbon nanotubes, according to Shalom Wind, senior research scientist at Columbia University (New York). Wind joined Columbia in 2003 after a stint at IBM Research's T.J. Watson Research Center where he helped characterize nanotube transistors. Like IBM's original design, Columbia's molecular transistors used a carbon nanotube as the transistor channel. The researchers cut the nanotube and inserted an application-specific organic molecule to functionalize the resulting molecular transistor, leaving the nanotubes as the source — and drain — electrodes. The researchers successfully inserting several different types of organic molecules, and reported detailed test results for an application-specific organic molecule that changed its conductivity in response to Ph. This enabled the molecular transistor to act as a Ph sensor. The insertion technique used nanoscale lithography and a oxidation process that prepared the severed ends of the nanotube for chemical bonding to the inserted molecule. By ensuring the gap cut in the nanotube was similar in size to the molecule to be inserted, the researchers were able to marry the ends of the nanotube to a single organic molecule. The researcher was performed at Columbia University's Nanoscience Center.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102248