Cryogenic temperature nanosensor.

After their discovery the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have generated a lot of enthusiasm and receive a great interest due to their unique electronic and mechanical properties. Various types of sensors designs have been fabricated and investigated for possible applications in medicine and biology and also in many industry fields: mechanical, aerospace and nuclear. We report on the experiments performed with a new prototype sensor based on SWCNTs and assembled using a hybrid technique, drop casted of the sensible material on an interdigitized electrode structure, followed by dielectrophoretic assembly. The distribution of the nanotubes on the sensor surface was visualized and characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The obtained structure was used and characterized as cryogenic temperature sensor from 4K to 150K.