Fabrication of Photodetectors using Transparent Carbon Nanotube Films

Carbon nanotubes are promising nanoscale materials for novel electrical, mechanical, chemical, and biological device and sensors based on its outstanding properties. Single walled carbon nanotubes can be either semiconducting or metallic material depending on its structures. However, controlling the structure is quite challenging with current technologies. For the network formation of the single walled carbon nanotubes, single walled carbon nanotube films, the properties of individual single walled carbon nanotubes are ensemble averaged and show uniform physical and electrical properties. Also it is transparent, flexible, and conductive. Therefore, it has attracted great research attentions and as a result, several applications of the single walled carbon nanotube films have been demonstrated. In this study, the metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector using the single walled carbon nanotube films are fabricated. The fabrication methods from the network synthesis to the photodetector device fabrication are demonstrated. The fabrication methods are vacuum filtration for the synthesis of single walled carbon nanotube films and typical semiconductor fabrication techniques for the fabrication of metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector device. Also the photoelectrical properties of the fabricated photodetector are discussed.