Visible light diffraction studies on periodically aligned arrays of carbon nanotubes: Experimental and theoretical comparison

We have investigated visible light diffraction on honeycomb arrays of aligned carbon nanotubes grown on nickel nanoparticles prepared using the nanosphere lithography. A monolayer of 980 nm polystyrene spheres was used as the mask for the deposition of nickel nanoparticles from which carbon nanotubes of 100 nm in diameter and up to a couple of microns in length were grown. We show that a standard theory of diffraction from point scatterers explains all the observed diffraction features including Bragg's law and the strong enhancement of the second and fifth order diffraction spots. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.