Packaging Processes for Carbon Nanotube-Based Devices

A systemic approach to maintain, control, and prevent the oxygen doping of CNT-based IR detectors is presented in this chapter. It includes two different processes-oxygen removal by the vacuum thermal annealing and oxygen prevention by parylene C packaging. The photonic behavior of the oxygen-doped and the de-doped CNT-based IR detector are studied. The oxygen molecules removal by thermal annealing process provides significant improvement in the performance of the CNT-based devices and the contact resistances at the CNT-metal interfaces. The fabrication, thermal annealing process, and packaging process of CNT-based IR detectors are also presented. Furthermore, the CNT-based IR detectors, successfully fabricated and their IR responses and I-V characteristics are investigated. Experimental results indicated that the IR sensing ability of the packaged device. Moreover, the packaged CNT-based device was able to sustain and exhibit repeatable photoresponses for a long period of time, which could not be observed from the results of CNT-based devices without parylene C coating. It indicated that parylene C acted as an excellent packaging material, which not only protected CNT-based devices from oxygen contamination, but also improved the stability of the CNT device. Based on the current results, the thermal annealing process and packaging process may potentially become efficient methods to fabricate a CNT-based IR detector array with reliable performance. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.