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Individual multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were deposited onto microelectrodes and embedded in nickel to achieve low-ohmic contact resistances. Electroless deposition of nickel onto gold/iron, palladium, and cobalt microelectrodes was used to form electrically stable bonds at the interfaces between the electrodes and CNTs. Resistance measurements showed that the contact resistances of the CNTs on gold/iron and palladium were significantly improved by nickel embedding, whereas no further improvement was found for the CNTs on cobalt. Electroless metal deposition is a parallel process providing stable electrical and mechanical contacts between CNTs and metallic microelectrodes.

Carbon nanotubes are of great interest because of their outstanding mechanical, chemical and electric properties. The decoration of multi-walled carbon nanotubes with metal clusters of gold, palladium, iron, cobalt and nickel opens even more applications, especially the growth of complex conductor networks in microelectronic devices.