Applying Viscous Shear Stress to Align Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) is a promising material for advanced electronics due to its unique electrical, physical, chemical, and mechanical characteristics. When working as channel and electrode materials in thin-film transistors (TFTs), alignment level of the SWNTs plays a crucial role for the device performance. In this work, we propose a new preparation method, using viscous shear stress in a shaking table, to realize well-dispersed and well-aligned SWNT arrays. The distribution and alignment of the SWNTs are determined by rotation speed of the shaking table and the dispersant concentration, respectively. The well-aligned SWNT arrays have been realized, with the SWNT density of 35∼40 tubes per $\mu \mathbf{m}^{\mathbf{2}}$ , when the dispersant concentration is 6.5 mmol/L and the rotation speed is set at 6.28 rad/s. Using viscous shear stress to align SWNTs opens a new door for developing advanced SWNT-based devices.