USE OF ALIGNED CARBON NANOTUBES AS ELECTRIC FIELD SENSORS

Application of electric field in normal to aligned carbon nanotubes creates Coulomb forces at intertube junctions and tubes become closely packed. Packed structure facilitates intertube transfer of carriers and reduced resistance is found to scale with field strength. Aggregated nanotubes are therefore used as field sensors and sensitivity is evident by drastic fluctuations of resistance. Sensing mechanism is discussed and verified.