Optical properties of aligned carbon nanotube systems studied by the effective-medium approximation method

Abstract

Using the effective-medium approximation (EMA), which is valid for densely and randomly distributed particle composites, we have investigated optical properties of a dense carbon nanotube system, in which the nanotubes are parallel in orientation but random in position. The morphologies of both the Maxwell-Garnett theory (MGT) and the array model are not consistent with the dense and random character of this nanotube system. Comparing with the MGT and the array model, the EMA can describe better the experimental data. When the effect of the hollow core of the nanotubes are considered, the EMA results are still better and can describe the experimental data quite well.