Highly transmissive carbon nanotube forests grown at low substrate temperature

Despite the "darker than black" association attributed to carbon nanotube forests, here is shown that it is also possible to grow these structures, over heat-sensitive substrates, featuring highly transmissive characteristics from the UV to infrared wavelengths, for forest heights as high as 20 μm. The optical transmission is interpreted in terms of light propagation along channels that are self-generated by localized bundling of tubes, acting as waveguides. A good correlation is shown between the distribution of diameter sizes of these sub-wavelength voids and the transmission spectrum of the forests. For the shorter visible and near-UV wavelengths, this model shows that light propagates by channeling along individual vertical voids in the forests, which elucidates the origin for the widely-reported near-zero reflectance values observed in forests. For the longer infrared wavelengths, the mode spreads over many nanotubes and voids, and propagates along a "homogeneous effective medium". The strong absorption of the forest at the shorter wavelengths is correlated in terms of the stronger attenuation inside a waveguide cavity, according to the λ attenuation dependency of standard waveguide theory. The realization of this material can lead to novel avenues in new optoelectronic device design, where the carbon nanotube forests can be used as highly conducting "scaffolds" for optically active materials, whilst also allowing light to penetrate to significant depths into the structure, in excess of 20 μm, enabling optical functionality. Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim