Characterization and Prototyping of Nanostructures

Prototyping is an iterative process that is part of the analysis phase of the nanosystems development life cycle. Usually, technologists expect the performance of the ultimate nanosystem to be the same as the designed prototype. However, the interactive multiscale prototyping presented in Chap. 3 leads to insufficient analysis at the pre-project stage, degraded performances of the ultimate nanodevice due to experimentation limitations, and lack in quantifiable experimentation feedback. Taking into account the disadvantages of the previous method, we present in this chapter a novel methodology of design and optimization using co-prototyping concepts of carbon nanotube-based nanodevices. It is an iterative optimization process coupling experiments performed on real nanodevices with computational methods of simulation. Among its’ many benefits, the co-prototyping approach lowers the development cost, the development time involved in prototyping, allows for more iterations during experimentation, and gives developers the chance to get immediate experimental feedback on refinements to the design. Furthermore, the theoretical characterization allows to analyze in deep detail some novel properties that could not be observable by the used experimental platform.