Monte Carlo simulations of carbon nanotube networks for optoelectronic applications

Abstract

Carbon nanotube networks are compatible with silicon and possess features of light modulation, detection and emission in the transparency band of silicon. This makes them excellent candidates as active material for silicon photonics. However, the ubiquitous presence of residual metallic nanotubes in nanotube networks is a strong issue for this vision. In this work, we perform Monte Carlo simulations of the electrical properties of nanotube networks, by extracting and simulating an equivalent netlist of the networks. The results allow us to identify the appropriate densities of nanotubes not affected by the metallic nanotube issue, and to propose a first design rule for nanotube-based optoelectronics.