Intellectual Property Law

US Patent 7514116 - Horizontal carbon nanotubes by vertical growth and rolling

The growth of vertical arrays of carbon nanotubes over a wide array is commonly practiced for applications such as field emission displays and has potential for mass production. However, other electronic structures such as interconnect wiring benefit from aligned arrays of nanotubes that are formed horizontal to the substrate which requires special alignment steps and is difficult to mass produce. This patent from Intel teaches a simple method of converting vertically aligned nanotube arrays to horizontally aligned array using a roller. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method comprising:

applying a catalyst to a plurality of different points on a substrate;

growing carbon nanotubes vertically on the plurality of different points to form a plurality of vertical carbon nanotube structures on the substrate; and

rolling the vertical carbon nanotube structures to form horizontal carbon nanotube structures.

Full post as published by TinytechIP on April 07, 2009 (boomark / email).