The thermal radiation from an isolated finite-length carbon nanotube (CNT) is theoretically investigated both in near- and far-field zones. The formation of the discrete spectrum in metallic CNTs in the terahertz range is demonstrated due to the reflection of strongly slowed-down surface-plasmon modes from CNT ends. The effect does not appear in semiconductor CNTs. The concept of CNT as a thermal nanoantenna is proposed.
Graphene and single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) have attracted great attention because of their ultra-high thermal conductivity. However, there are few works exploring the relations of their thermal conductivity quantitatively. The carbon nanocone (
CNC) is a graded structure fall in between graphene disk (GD) and SWCNT. We perform non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulation to study the thermal conductivity of CNC with different apex angles, and then compare them with that of GD and SWCNT. Our results show that, different from the homogeneous thermal conductivity in SWCNT, the CNC also has a natural graded thermal conductivity which is similar to the GD. Unexpectedly, the graded rate keeps almost the same when the apex angle decreases from 180{deg} (GD) to 19{deg}, but then suddenly declines to zero when the apex angle decreases from 19{deg} to 0{deg} (SWCNT). What is more interesting, the graded effect is not diminished when the interatomic force constant is weakened and mean free path is shorten. That is, besides nanoscale, the graded effect can be observed in macroscale graphene or CNC structures.
We describe a film of highly-aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes that acts as an excellent terahertz linear polarizer. There is virtually no attenuation (strong absorption) when the terahertz polarization is perpendicular (parallel) to the nanotub
e axis. From the data we calculated the reduced linear dichrosim to be 3, corresponding to a nematic order parameter of 1, which demonstrates nearly perfect alignment as well as intrinsically anisotropic terahertz response of single-walled carbon nanotubes in the film.
The high-frequency transconductance and current noise of top-gated single carbon nanotube transistors have been measured and used to investigate hot electron effects in one-dimensional transistors. Results are in good agreement with a theory of 1-dim
ensional nano-transistor. In particular the prediction of a large transconductance correction to the Johnson-Nyquist thermal noise formula is confirmed experimentally. Experiment shows that nanotube transistors can be used as fast charge detectors for quantum coherent electronics with a resolution of $13mathrm{mu e/sqrt{Hz}}$ in the 0.2-$0.8 mathrm{GHz}$ band.
We study macroscopically-aligned single-wall carbon nanotube arrays with uniform lengths via polarization-dependent terahertz and infrared transmission spectroscopy. Polarization anisotropy is extreme at frequencies less than $sim$3 THz with no sign
of attenuation when the polarization is perpendicular to the alignment direction. The attenuation for both parallel and perpendicular polarizations increases with increasing frequency, exhibiting a pronounced and broad peak around 10 THz in the parallel case. We model the electromagnetic response of the sample by taking into account both radiative scattering and absorption losses. We show that our sample acts as an effective antenna due to the high degree of alignment, exhibiting much larger radiative scattering than absorption in the mid/far-infrared range. Our calculated attenuation spectrum clearly shows a non-Drude peak at $sim$10 THz in agreement with the experiment.
Recently nanomechanical devices composed of a long stationary inner carbon nanotube and a shorter, slowly-rotating outer tube have been fabricated. In this Letter, we study the possibility of using such devices as adiabatic quantum pumps. Using the B
rouwer formula, we employ a Greens function technique to determine the pumped charge from one end of the inner tube to the other, driven by the rotation of a chiral outer nanotube. We show that there is virtually no pumping if the chiral angle of the two nanotubes is the same, but for optimal chiralities the pumped charge can be a significant fraction of a theoretical upper bound.