Drawing circuits with carbon nanotubes: scratch-induced graphoepitaxial growth of carbon nanotubes on amorphous silicon oxide substrates.

Controlling the orientations of nanomaterials on arbitrary substrates is crucial for the development of practical applications based on such materials. The aligned epitaxial growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on specific crystallographic planes in single crystalline sapphire or quartz has been demonstrated; however, these substrates are unsuitable for large scale electronic device applications and tend to be quite expensive. Here, we report a scalable method based on graphoepitaxy for the aligned growth of SWNTs on conventional SiO₂/Si substrates. The "scratches" generated by polishing were found to feature altered atomic organizations that are similar to the atomic alignments found in vicinal crystalline substrates. The linear and circular scratch lines could promote the oriented growth of SWNTs through the chemical interactions between the C atoms in SWNT and the Si adatoms in the scratches. The method presented has the potential to be used to prepare complex geometrical patterns of SWNTs by 'drawing' circuits using SWNTs without the need for state-of-the-art equipment or complicated lithographic processes.