Terahertz Reflectometry Imaging of Carbon Nanomaterials for Biological Application

The multiwalled carbon nanotubes has a myriad of applications due to its unique electrical and mechanical properties. The biomedical application of multiwalled carbon nanotubes that have been reported include drug delivery, medical imaging, gene delivery, tissue regeneration, and diagnostics. Proper characterization is required to enhance the potential application of the multiwalled carbon nanotubes. Terahertz technology is a relatively unfamiliar spectrometric technique that show promise in efficiently characterizing multiwalled carbon nanotubes. In this paper, terahertz imaging was used to characterize multiwalled carbon nanotube in comparison with other characterization techniques, including transmission electron microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy. The average diameter of the carbon nanotubes from the reconstructed terahertz images was 48.54 nm, while the average length of a fiber was found to be approximately 1.2 μm. The multiwalled carbon nanotubes were additionally characterized by FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy.