Electrical Nanoprobing of Semiconducting Carbon Nanotubes Using an Atomic Force Microscope

We use an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip to locally probe the electronic properties of semiconducting carbon nanotube transistors. A gold-coated AFM tip serves as a voltage or current probe in three-probe measurement setup. Using the tip as a movable current probe, we investigate the scaling of the device properties with channel length. Using the tip as a voltage probe, we study the properties of the contacts. We find that Au makes an excellent contact in the $p$ region, with no Schottky barrier. In the $n$ region, large contact resistances were found which dominate the transport properties.