The one-dimensional character of electrons, phonons and excitons in individual single-walled carbon nanotubes leads to extremely anisotropic electronic, thermal and optical properties. However, despite significant efforts to develop ways to produce large-scale architectures of aligned nanotubes, macroscopic manifestations of such properties remain limited. Here, we show that large (>cm²) monodomain films of aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes can be prepared using slow vacuum filtration. The produced films are globally aligned within 【1.5∑ (a nematic order parameter of …1) and are highly packed, containing 1 】 10⁶ nanotubes in a cross-sectional area of 1 レm². The method works for nanotubes synthesized by various methods, and film thickness is controllable from a few nanometres to …100 nm. We use the approach to create ideal polarizers in the terahertz frequency range and, by combining the method with recently developed sorting techniques, highly aligned and chirality-enriched nanotube thin-film devices. Semiconductor-enriched devices exhibit polarized light emission and polarization-dependent photocurrent, as well as anisotropic conductivities and transistor action with high on/off ratios.

Nature Nanotechnology (2016) doi:10.1038/nnano.2016.44

Received 25 July 2015 Accepted 19 February 2016 Published online 04 April 2016

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2016.44.html