The influence of probe lift-up height on CNT electrical properties measurement under EFM DC mode

Nowadays, one of the bottlenecks which hinder the development and application of carbon nanotube (CNT) nano device is that no pure semiconducting CNT (s-CNT) or metallic CNT (m-CNT) can be obtained, and for solving this problem scientists proposed some methods on preparation or separation, but all the results still should be detected and feedback to the process for further improving the preparation and separation methods. Thus, it is very important to measure and distinguish the electrical properties of CNT. For that, scientists proposed a method to measure CNT electrical properties based on DC electrostatic force microscope (EFM) mode, which distinguishes m-CNT from s-CNT according to different scan line shape to CNT with different electrical properties. But, we discovered that the probe lift-up height will seriously affect the shape of the scan line, which makes this method not reliable in distinguishing m-CNT from s-CNT. In this paper, the authors deeply researched the influence of probe lift-up height and also gave corresponding theoretical analysis and explanation, which will greatly improve the method of detecting CNT electrical properties by EFM.