Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
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Communicated by Sumio Iijima, Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan, January 29, 2009 (received for review October 19, 2008)
Abstract
Among all known materials, we found that a forest of vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes behaves most similarly to a black body, a theoretical material that absorbs all incident light. A requirement for an object to behave as a black body is to perfectly absorb light of all wavelengths. This important feature has not been observed for real materials because materials intrinsically have specific absorption bands because of their structure and composition. We found a material that can absorb light almost perfectly across a very wide spectral range (0.2–200 μm). We attribute this black body behavior to stem from the sparseness and imperfect alignment of the vertical single-walled carbon nanotubes.
Footnotes
- 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kenji-hata{at}aist.go.jp
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Author contributions: K.M., J.I., H.K., M.Y., and K.H. designed research; K.M., J.I., H.K., S.Y., D.N.F., and K.H. performed research; K.M., J.I., H.K., Y.H., and K.H. analyzed data; and K.M., D.N.F., and K.H. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0900155106/DCSupplemental.
A black body absorber from vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes
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