Highly ordered carbon nanotube arrays and IR detection

This review highlights the relevant fabrication process, physical features, electronic properties of carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays in the context of potential infrared (IR) applications. Although experimental demonstration of the CNT array's in IR detection operation is necessarily needed to pave the way for full scale development, it is perhaps more important, at this early stage of the exploration, to gain a better understanding of the fundamental aspects of the material, the underlying physics, and the base fabrication technology. Theoretical analysis and experimental evidences will be presented to show that the CNT array as an IR material can have a semiconducting bandgap that should be and is tunable with the tube diameter and can cover a broad range of spectral response from 1 to 10 mum. Moreover, the technology offers natural normal incident detection, a detection surface area that is not wafer-size limited and is conformable to curved surface, and low manufacturing cost. The highly ordered and uniform array and tube-to-tube insulation helps to suppress spatially random thermal noise, and gives rise to high resilience to defect-induced failure. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.