Au-Nanoislands and Quantum Dots growth on Flexible Light weight MWCNTs paper exhibiting SEM resolution and NIR photodetecting capabilities

Gold nano-structures (Au-NS's) assembled on a multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT's) reinforced functional substrate is a very attractive system routinely used in optoelectronics, EM shielding plasmonics, catalysis, chemical sensing, and solar energy devices. Here we used a very simple thermal annealing method to assemble gold nano-islands (Au-NI's) and quantum dots (QD's) on a flexible lightweight multiwall carbon nanotube (FL-MWCNT) paper. We report thickness dependent Au thin film annealing to form Au-NI's i.e. Au-NI's and QD's on FL-MWCNT paper. The highly reproducible assembly of Au-NI's was investigated by selecting an area of 4 × 4 µm2. The average diameters of ∼49 nm and ∼8 nm were observed for Au-Nis & QD's with domain diameters ranging from 20 to 120 nm and 2 to 20 nm, respectively. This study demonstrated how to make nanoparticles in a straight-forward, high–density, and large-scale manner. Integrating novel metals with flexible carbon-based nanomaterials results in a specimen for SEM resolution studies and promising photodetector under NIR laser (1064 nm) irradiation with increased photoresponsivity (43.91 A/W), detectivity (2.16 × 109 Jones) as well as a very good detector response time (rise time (43 ms) and decay time (145 ms)) which represent the multifunctional uses of Au-NS's decorated FLMWCNTs samples.