Deposition of carbon nanotube thin films using resistive vacuum evaporation.

As a major development in recent decades, thin films of carbon nanotubes (CNT) have emerged as a promising material suitable for many novel devices because of their exceptional electrical, optical and mechanical properties. The main goal of this work is to develop CNT based films and analyze its structure and morphology. Instead of preparing directly from carbon atoms, we have prepared films on amorphous substrates by thermal evaporation of commercially available multiwalled CNT powder from Sigma-Aldrich. Optical and structural properties were investigated through absorption, Raman and FTIR spectroscopy and high resolution Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy. We have studied the optical damage of the prepared films using a pulsed Nd: YAG Laser. The films withstand an optical power in excess of ∼107 Wcm−2 under pulsed laser irradiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]