Single-walled carbon nanotubes （SWCNTs） illuminated by white light should appear colored due to resonance Rayleigh scattering. However, true-color imaging of SWCNTs on substrates has not been reported, because of th...Single-walled carbon nanotubes （SWCNTs） illuminated by white light should appear colored due to resonance Rayleigh scattering. However, true-color imaging of SWCNTs on substrates has not been reported, because of the extremely low scattering intensity of SWCNTs and the strong substrate scattering. Here we show that Rayleigh scattering can be greatly enhanced by the interface dipole enhancement effect. Consequently colorful SWCNTs on substrates can be directly imaged under an optical microscope by wide field supercontinuum laser illumination, which facilitates high throughput chirality assignment of individual SWCNTs. This approach, termed ＂Rayleigh imaging microscopy＂, is not restricted to SWCNTs, but widely applicable to a variety of nanomaterials, which enables the colorful nanoworld to be explored under optical microscopes.展开更多
基金The authors would like to thank Prof. Feng Wang, Prof. Xuedong Bai, and Prof. Kaihui Liu for helpful discussions. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China （No. 2012CB932301） and the National Natural Science Foundation of China （Nos. 90921012, 11321091, 51102144, 11274190, and 51102147）.
文摘Single-walled carbon nanotubes （SWCNTs） illuminated by white light should appear colored due to resonance Rayleigh scattering. However, true-color imaging of SWCNTs on substrates has not been reported, because of the extremely low scattering intensity of SWCNTs and the strong substrate scattering. Here we show that Rayleigh scattering can be greatly enhanced by the interface dipole enhancement effect. Consequently colorful SWCNTs on substrates can be directly imaged under an optical microscope by wide field supercontinuum laser illumination, which facilitates high throughput chirality assignment of individual SWCNTs. This approach, termed ＂Rayleigh imaging microscopy＂, is not restricted to SWCNTs, but widely applicable to a variety of nanomaterials, which enables the colorful nanoworld to be explored under optical microscopes.
