Cylindrical Fresnel lenses based on carbon nanotube forests

Butt, H and Rajesekharan, R and Dai, Q and Sarfraz, S and Vasant Kumar, R and Amaratunga, GAJ and Wilkinson, TD (2012) Cylindrical Fresnel lenses based on carbon nanotube forests. Applied Physics Letters, 101. ISSN 0003-6951

Abstract

The forests of carbon nanotubes have been termed as the darkest man-made materials. Such materials exhibit near-perfect optical absorption (reflectance∼0.045%) due to low reflectance and nanoscale surface roughness. We have demonstrated the utilization of these perfectly absorbing forests to produce binary amplitude cylindrical Fresnel lenses. The opaque Fresnel zones are defined by the dark nanotube forests and these lenses display efficient focusing performance at optical wavelengths. Lensing performance was analyzed both computationally and experimentally with good agreement. Such nanostructure based lenses have many potential applications in devices like photovoltaic solar cells. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.