Germany - AIXTRON (www.aixtron.com) announced the successful conclusion of the European Commission-funded “TECHNOTUBES” (Technology for Wafer-Scale Carbon Nanotubes) project, with a demonstration of its new automated growth equipment, BM 300T.

The aim of the 3-year project was to develop growth processes, automated equipment, quality control/monitoring and a variety of end-applications based on carbon nanotubes. The members of the project consortium were the University of Cambridge (coordinator), ETH Zurich, TU Denmark, TU Berlin, Fritz Haber Institute, CNR-Italy, Philips, THALES, Cambridge CMOS Sensors, IMEC, and AIXTRON. The TECHNOTUBES Project Consortium The AIXTRON BM 300T CNT Production System Prof. John Robertson, the project coordinator from the University of Cambridge, comments,

“This unique project brings together world-class partners from industry and research to create a carbon nanotube value chain, from growth equipment to material production to exploitable devices. The key applications that emerged from this project include interconnects, thermal interface materials, medical and security X-ray sources, gas detectors, biological probes, microfluidics and novel energy storage devices. We are grateful to the European Commission for providing the funding which made this project possible.”

Dr. Ken Teo, Director of Nanoinstruments adds, “Our role at AIXTRON was to create a system capable of depositing various carbon nanotube structures that met the requirements of these applications. The challenge was to integrate various processes (single-wall, multiwall, straight vertical nanotubes) into a single platform offering the uniformity, repeatability and a high degree of automation that industrial production partners demand. The BM 300T system we have developed successfully achieves these goals by enabling high throughput, wafer-scale carbon nanotube production, incorporating thermal and plasma deposition, precursor activation and a novel wafer loading and heating system.”