Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2008

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Chair

Alphenaar, Bruce William

Subject

Nanotubes

Abstract

Optical properties of carbon nanotubes have recently attracted considerable amount of attention. Due to there direct band gap material characteristic these and dimension of the order of nano meters they find potential applications in the field of nano photonics. Thus the optical study of carbon nanotubes is important for both fundamental research and for the next generation technical applications. In this thesis single walled carbon nanotubes were dispersed in various encapsulates such as surfactants, polymers, proteins etc to separate them individually and study there optical properties. The individually dispersed single walled carbon nanotubes displayed unique absorbance spectra. The optical absorption spectrum of a particular tube is expected to be dominated by a series of relatively sharp inter-band transitions, at energies associated with the van Hove singularities, the absorbance spectrum obtained on our samples were consistent with this expectation. Our samples also showed sharp photoluminescence peaks mostly from the semiconducting single walled carbon nanotubes. The detailed overlap of the absorbance spectra and photoluminescence spectra lead us to believe that our samples contain mainly individual tubes encapsulated in one of the surfactants or polymers. Thin film transistors (TFT) were made with a mesh of single walled carbon nanotubes as the active channel on top of a silicon/silicon oxide substrate, with silicon acting as a back gate and titanium/gold electrodes were evaporated on top of the nanotube film. Photocurrent properties of these thin films were investigated and they showed a huge change in the photocurrent in the presence and absence of the laser light. Thin films of carbon nanotubes were also deposited on rectangular silicon substrates and the influence of applied strain in the presence of laser light was investigated. These films showed a huge change in resistance on application of mechanical strain. Raman measurements were also performed on these thin films and the obtained radial breathing mode (RBM) data helped resolve the diameter of many single walled carbon nanotubes.

Download

Share

COinS