Controlled, Site-Specific Functionalization of Carbon Nanotubes With Diazonium Salts

This work uses existing technologies to prepare a crossbar architecture of nanotubes, wherein one nanotube is fixed to a substrate, and a second nanotube is suspended a finite distance above. Both nanotubes can be individually addressed electrically. Application of opposite potentials to the two tubes causes the top tube to deform and to essentially come into contact with the lower tube. Contact here refers not to actual, physical contact, but rather within an infinitesimally small distance referred to as van der Walls contact, in which the entities may influence each other on a molecular and electronic scale.