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Electrically driven thermal light emission from individual single-walled carbon nanotubes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 2, pages 33–38 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Light emission from nanostructures exhibits rich quantum effects and has broad applications. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are one-dimensional metals or semiconductors in which large numbers of electronic states in narrow energy ranges, known as van Hove singularities, can lead to strong spectral transitions1,2. Photoluminescence and electroluminescence involving interband transitions and excitons have been observed in semiconducting SWNTs3,4,5,6,7,8,9, but are not expected in metallic tubes owing to non-radiative relaxations. Here, we show that, under low bias voltages, a suspended quasi-metallic SWNT (QM-SWNT) emits light owing to Joule heating, displaying strong peaks in the visible and infrared, corresponding to interband transitions. This is a result of thermal light emission in a one-dimensional system, in stark contrast with featureless blackbody-like emission observed in large bundles of SWNTs or multiwalled nanotubes10,11,12. This allows for probing of the electronic temperature and non-equilibrium hot optical phonons in Joule-heated QM-SWNTs.

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Figure 1: Visible thermal light emission of quasi-metallic SWNTs.
Figure 2: Thermal light emission of suspended metallic SWNTs with E11 and E22 peaks.
Figure 3: Thermal light emission spectra of a 2.9-µm-long suspended QM-SWNT compared with theory.
Figure 4: Thermal light emission of suspended QM-SWNTs exhibits exponential dependence on power dissipation in the devices.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. E. Moerner for use of the confocal optical setup. This work was supported in part by MARCO MSD Focus Center and a NSF-NIRT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    David Mann, Y. K. Kato, Anika Kinkhabwala, Eric Pop, Jien Cao, Xinran Wang, Li Zhang, Qian Wang & Hongjie Dai

  2. Intel Corporation, 2200 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara, 95054, California, USA

    Eric Pop

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32611, Florida, USA

    Jing Guo

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  1. David Mann
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Contributions

H.D., D.M. and Y.K. conceived and designed the experiments. D.M., Y.K., A.K., E.P., J.C, X.W., L.Z., Q.W. and J.G. performed the experiments and analysed the data. H.D., D.M. and Y.K. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hongjie Dai.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Mann, D., Kato, Y., Kinkhabwala, A. et al. Electrically driven thermal light emission from individual single-walled carbon nanotubes. Nature Nanotech 2, 33–38 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2006.169

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