A terahertz detector with single walled carbon nanotube P-N junction

We report on a novel type of a room-temperature terahertz (THz) detector using a single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) film, which is based on detection mechanism of the photothermoelectric effect. Enhancing difference in the Seebeck coefficient between two adjacent materials is a key technique for improving the detection sensitivity. In this work, we fabricated a p-n junction in the SWNT film by dropping a doping solution in a half part of this film, and achieved three times higher sensitivity than that of previous SWNT detectors.