Terahertz performance of single-walled carbon nanotubes and arrays

Abstract

A new carbon nanotube antenna to generate terahertz waves is proposed. The typical properties of terahertz radiation from carbon nanotube dipole antennas have been investigated based on finite integral methods. The terahertz pulses emitted from carbon nanotubes and the terahertz amplitude spectrum have been analysed for carbon nanotubes with a length of 15 μm and a radius of 2.712 nm. Other properties such as current distributions, electrical field distributions and scattering parameters are also presented. For a single-carbon nanotube dipole, the gain is very low due to its extremely small radius. Therefore, carbon nanotube arrays have been proposed in order to improve the gain and efficiency. The results could be useful for the design of the future nano-antennas at terahertz range. © 2010 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.