Photothermal Actuation of Cantilevered Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes with Bimaterial Configuration toward Calorimeter

Abstract

We investigated the bimaterial effect on a multiwall carbon nanotube (CNT) cantilever by means of a photothermal actuation method toward sensitivity enhancement for calorimetry. The coating of a 10-nm-thick Ti layer on top of the CNT cantilever of 50 nm diameter successfully enhanced the photothermal vibration amplitude by 10–50 times. This implies that the expected resolution for the heat capacity measurement is as high as ∼0.1 fJ/K on the base of a simple lumped model for the photothermally excited Ti-coated CNT cantilever.