Carbon nanotube transistors could lead to inexpensive, flexible electronics

Recently, researchers have been developing carbon nanotube-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) in the hopes of creating high-performance, flexible, transparent devices, such as e-paper and RFID tags. However, one of the biggest challenges holding back the transistors’ performance is a trade-off between the properties of metallic and semiconducting nanotubes that make up the transistors. In a new study, researchers have developed a new way of fabricating nanotube networks that partly overcomes this problem, and show that the nanotube networks could be used to make transistors as well as flexible integrated circuits (ICs).