Inverter and Ternary Content-Addressable Memory Based on Carbon Nanotube Transistors Using Chemical Doping Strategy

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted much attention in transistors because of their unique structure and electrical properties. However, the implementation of transistor polarity control and complementary logic functions remains a key challenge. In this work, the polarity of carbon nanotube transistors using chemical doping strategy is modulated. By triethyl oxonium hexachloro antimonate doping and polyethylene imine doping with chemically modified, p-type CNTs and n-type CNTs as the transistor channel of the bottom gate structure field effect transistors are prepared. An inverter is constructed by connecting p-type transistor and n-type transistor in series. The inverter has a voltage hysteresis window and gain over 20.5. A Schmitt trigger with operating frequency over 2 MHz is built based on high-low conversion of inverter output voltage during dual-scan has different threshold voltage characteristics. Two inverters are used to construct a ternary content-addressable memory cell with four transistors, which has an on/off ratio up to 10(4), a data retention characteristic of 10(4) s, and a good stability of more than 1000 cycles, indicating the great potential of practical application in future computing-in memory.

Automated summary

In this work, the polarity of carbon nanotube transistors was modulated using a chemical doping strategy. A p-type carbon nanotube transistor and an n-type carbon nanotube transistor were connected in series to construct an inverter and a Schmitt trigger. A ternary content-addressable memory cell was also built using two inverters. The results showed good performance and potential for future application in computing-in memory.