Direct Growth of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Films and Their Optoelectric Properties

We introduce a new method to synthesize semitransparent continuous single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) films by the arc discharge process. Our analyses indicate that the directly grown films are weaved by long and high-quality SWNTs, in which a considerable amount of metallic tubes have been identified. Because of this unique continuous network structure, the sheet resistance of a 150 nm thick film with a transmittance higher than 77% is 117 Omega/square. Moreover, the as-grown film shows an excellent field emission property with low turn-on (E-to = 0.4 V/mu m) and threshold fields (E-th = 1.4 V/mu m) corresponding to the emission current density of 0.1 mu A/cm(2) and 1 mA/cm(2), respectively.