Carbon nanotube transistors make the leap from lab to factory floor

Researchers at MIT have demonstrated that carbon nanotube field-effect transistors can be made swiftly in commercial facilities with the same equipment used to manufacture the silicon-based transistors that are the backbone of today's computing industry. Carbon nanotube field-effect transistors are more energy-efficient than silicon field-effect transistors and could be used to build new types of three-dimensional microprocessors. After analyzing the deposition technique used to make carbon nanotube field-effect transistors, the researchers made some changes to speed up the fabrication process by more than 1,100 times compared to the conventional method, while also reducing the cost of production.