Characterization of the radiation from single-walled zig-zag carbon nanotubes at terahertz range

Abstract

This paper investigates the radiation characteristics of metal single-walled zig-zag carbon nanotubes as a dipole antenna at terahertz wave range. The current distribution, input impedance and mutual impedance are calculated for various geometrical parameters of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes. The numerical results demonstrate the properties of the antenna depending strongly on the geometrical parameters such as the radius, the lengths of carbon nantobues, and the spacing between nanotubes. It is found that the zig-zag carbon nanotubes exhibit very high input impedance and the mutual impedances for antenna array applications. These unique high impedance properties are different from the conventional metal thin wire antenna. The far-field patterns and gain of antenna array are also calculated. The maximum gain of array of 100-element array is up to 20.0 dB, which is larger than the gain of 0.598 dB of single dipole antenna at distance d 0.5λ. © 2010 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd.