QMHP: Tunable Plasmon Nanooptics with Carbon Nanotubes

North Carolina Central University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND APPROACHES The objective of this research is to explore how one can use low-energy collective plasmon excitations of individual nanotubes to tailor the optical properties of periodically aligned, densely packed, parallel arrays of carbon nanotubes. The rigorous quantum electrodynamics approach, developed earlier by the PI for individual nanotubes, will be used. The approach starts with single-tube band-structure calculations and allows one to go beyond the ideally-conducting-cylinder and effective-medium restrictive approximations employed previously by others. INTELLECTUAL MERIT Mixing surface states with bulk-periodic dielectric properties brings dense, periodically aligned carbon nanotube arrays into the highly demanded broad-band spectral range of microwave to visible, which can be tuned by adjusting inter-tube separation, tube diameter and chirality, and by varying dielectric host material. Clear understanding of the properties of low-energy collective electronic excitations in periodically aligned carbon nanotube arrays and how individual constituent nanotubes communicate with one another and what it does to the collective properties of the array, is a natural prerequisite for the realization of a variety of practical applications ranging from the enhanced electromagnetic absorption, conversion and rectification of ambient electromagnetic fields to nano-biosensorics and advanced plasmonic metamaterials development. BROADER IMPACT This research will result in novel optoelectronic device concepts for advanced electromagnetic meta-materials engineering for use in future energy related applications. Increased exposure of under-represented minority students from NCCU, nation's first state-supported public liberal arts college for African Americans, to this exciting cutting-edge nanotechnology research will lead to increased minority participation in graduate studies in scientific disciplines and in scientific careers in general.