Enhancement of semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes photoluminescence

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that removing metallic SWNTs from semiconducting SWNT films significantly enhances their photoluminescence, making them promising for photonic applications like infrared emitters and detectors.

Contribution

The paper presents a method to purify semiconducting SWNTs and shows that metallic SWNTs quench photoluminescence, improving the material's potential for photonic devices.

Findings

Highly purified s-SWNT films exhibit strong photoluminescence.

Presence of metallic SWNTs causes significant quenching of emission.

Purified s-SWNTs are suitable for near-infrared photonic applications.

Abstract

Photoluminescence properties of semiconducting single wall carbon nanotubes (s-SWNT) thin films with different metallic single wall carbon nanotubes (m-SWNT) concentrations are reported. s-SWNT purified samples are obtained by polymer assisted selective extraction. We show that a few m-SWNT in the sample generates a drastic quenching of the emission. Therefore, highly purified s-SWNT films are a strongly luminescent material and a good candidate for future applications in photonics, such as near infrared emitters, modulators and detectors.