AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    Graphene and Other 2D Materials Focus Topic Thursday Sessions
       Session GR-ThP

Paper GR-ThP8
An Infrared Sensor using a Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube Sheet

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 6:00 pm, Room Hall B

Session: Graphene and Other 2D Materials Poster Session
Presenter: D. Jung, The University of Texas at Dallas
Authors: D. Jung, The University of Texas at Dallas
M. Han, The University of Texas at Dallas
G.S. Lee, The University of Texas at Dallas
Correspondent: Click to Email
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a potential capacity to be efficient infrared (IR) sensing materials due to their outstanding electronic and optical properties. There are many reports on the IR photo-response in the conductivity/resistance of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT). Although theoretical and experimental development toward individual SWCNT based IR sensor has been reported, several obstacles disturb the further progress of SWCNT based IR sensors. Firstly, SWCNTs still have some issues in their purification, separation, and dispersion in a liquid/polymer used to enhance their electrical and optical properties. It is difficult to modify the density and thickness of the SWCNTs causing reduction in their production efficiency. Secondly, there is no a reliable and efficient transfer way to reproducibly fabricate SWCNT based sensors up to now. Lastly, how to make large scale and uniformly aligned films for mass production by using SWCNT. In this paper, spin-capable multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) is proposed to fulfill the above three challenges. The IR detector fabricated by MWCNT sheet, which pulled out from spin-capable MWCNT forest has large surface area and well aligned individual MWCNT. By investigating theoretical analysis with experimental results, we focused on which factors can affect the sensitivity and response time of MWCNT IR detectors, which gives help for further design for practical applications. We’ve founded that the extremely low heat capacity per unit area of MWCNT in sheet enabled a fast IR response of the MWCNT IR detectors. Experiments by acid treatment and increasing the surface area of CNT films have been carried out to improve the sensitivity and response time of the CNT film detector. We’ve observed that the MWCNT IR sensor exhibits shows a 16 % resistance change with a fast response time of 10 ms under 10 mW/mm2 of IR illumination at room temperature.