Collective antenna effects in the terahertz and infrared response of highly aligned carbon nanotube arrays

Abstract

We study macroscopically aligned single-wall carbon nanotube arrays with uniform lengths via polarization-dependent terahertz and infrared transmission spectroscopy. Polarization anisotropy is extreme at frequencies less than ∼100 cm−1 with no sign of attenuation when the polarization is perpendicular to the alignment direction. The attenuation for both parallel and perpendicular polarizations increases with increasing frequency, exhibiting a pronounced and broad peak around 450 cm−1 in the parallel case. We model the electromagnetic response of the sample by taking into account both radiative scattering and absorption losses. We show that our sample acts as an effective antenna due to the high degree of alignment, exhibiting much larger radiative scattering than absorption in the mid/far-infrared range. Our calculated attenuation spectrum clearly shows a non-Drude peak at ∼450 cm−1 in agreement with the experiment.