Blackbody thermal radiator with vertically aligned carbon nanotube coating

Abstract

The effective emissivity of a cavity-type blackbody thermal radiator is greatly enhanced by a target disk with a coating of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNT). The effective emissivity of this cavity is close to 1 and is less dependent on wavelength. Observed and calculated increases in radiance temperature owing to the use of the CNT disk show good agreement with each other and the dependence of the radiance temperature on the cavity depth is reduced substantially, thus enabling a compact cavity that can be effectively employed in the calibration of industrial radiation thermometers operating in a wide wavelength range.