# Macroscopically Aligned Carbon Nanotubes as a Refractory Platform for Hyperbolic Thermal Emitters

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that aligned carbon nanotubes serve as a thermally stable, hyperbolic nanophotonic platform with broadband high PDOS, enabling advanced thermal emission control at high temperatures.

## Contribution

It introduces macroscopic aligned carbon nanotube films as a new refractory hyperbolic material with extreme anisotropy and broadband PDOS for nanophotonics applications.

## Key findings

- Aligned carbon nanotubes are stable up to 1600°C.
- They exhibit hyperbolic behavior with large PDOS over >4.3μm spectrum.
- Observed polarized, spectrally selective thermal emission at 700°C.

## Abstract

Refractory nanophotonics, or nanophotonics at high temperatures, can revolutionize many applications, including data storage and waste heat recovery. In particular, nanophotonic devices made from hyperbolic materials are promising due to their nearly infinite photonic density of states (PDOS). However, it is challenging to achieve a prominent PDOS in existing refractory hyperbolic materials, especially in a broad spectral range. Here, we demonstrate that macroscopic films and architectures of aligned carbon nanotubes work as excellent refractory hyperbolic materials. We found that aligned carbon nanotubes are thermally stable up to $1600^{\circ}$C and exhibit extreme anisotropy - metallic in one direction and insulating in the other two directions. Such extreme anisotropy makes this system a hyperbolic material with an exceptionally large PDOS over a broadband spectrum range (longer than $4.3\mu$m) in the midinfrared, exhibiting strong resonances in deeply sub-wavelength-sized cavities. We observed polarized, spectrally selective thermal emission from aligned carbon nanotube films as well as indefinite cavities of aligned carbon nanotubes with volume as small as $\sim\lambda^3/700$ operating at $700^{\circ}$C . These experiments suggest that aligned carbon nanotubes possess naturally large PDOS that leads to thermal photon densities enhanced by over two orders of magnitude, making them a promising refractory nanophotonics platform.