Pole-zero analysis and wavelength scaling of carbon nanotube antennas

Abstract

Carbon nanotube (CN) antennas have applications in the THz electromagnetic spectrum. Nanotubes have a highly dispersive and frequency dependent conductivity model. In this article, we compare the poles and zeros in the input impedance of CN antennas at different lengths. We used model-based parameter estimation to approximate the input impedance of the antenna with a rational function in the complex frequency domain. Despite dispersive conductivity of CN, the imaginary part of the poles and zeros are respectively the integer multiples and odd multiples of the imaginary part of the first pole and zero. However, the real part of poles is almost constant, while the pattern was not observed for the real part of zeros. We also show that CN dipoles operating between 43 and 53 GHz are well matched if the source impedance is much higher than 50 ohms, and even higher than 12.9 kΩ. The fundamental resonances (f0) of CN dipoles plotted versus their inverse-half-length (1/L) are linearly related, but the intercept of the fitted straight line is non-zero unlike that for perfect electric conductor (PEC) dipoles. This leads to non-linear variation in wavelength scaling of CN dipoles. The resonant CN antennas are relatively much shorter than PEC dipoles.