Thermoacoustic Transduction in Individual Suspended Carbon Nanotubes

We report an experimental measurement of the acoustic signal emitted from an individual suspended carbon nanotube (CNT) approximate 2 μm in length, 1 nm in diameter, and 10–21 kg in mass. This system represents the smallest thermoacoustic system studied to date. By applying an AC voltage of 1.4 V at...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inACS nano Vol. 9; no. 5; pp. 5372 - 5376
Main Authors Mason, Blake J, Chang, Shun-Wen, Chen, Jihan, Cronin, Stephen B, Bushmaker, Adam W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Chemical Society 26.05.2015
Subjects
CNT
thermoacoustic
thermal conduction
loudspeaker
transduction
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Summary:We report an experimental measurement of the acoustic signal emitted from an individual suspended carbon nanotube (CNT) approximate 2 μm in length, 1 nm in diameter, and 10–21 kg in mass. This system represents the smallest thermoacoustic system studied to date. By applying an AC voltage of 1.4 V at 8 kHz to the suspended CNT, we are able to detect the acoustic signal using a commercial microphone. The acoustic power detected is found to span a range from 0.1 to 2.4 attoWatts or 0.2 to 1 μPa of sound pressure. This corresponds to thermoacoustic efficiencies ranging from 0.007 to 0.6 Pa/W for the seven devices that were measured in this study. Here, the small lateral dimensions of these devices cause large heat losses due to thermal conduction, which result in the relatively small observed thermoacoustic efficiencies.
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ISSN:1936-0851
1936-086X
DOI:10.1021/acsnano.5b01119