Author(s)

Marianna Barberio, P. Barone, A. Imbrogno, A. Bonanno, F. Xu

Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cosenza, Italy.
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cosenza, Italy;Dipartimento di Biologia, Ecologia e Scienze della Terra, Uni- versità della Calabria, Cosenza, Italy..

In this work, we present the growth and optical characterization of carbon nanotube/TiO₂ anatase nanocomposites. The composites are obtained by doping a bulk of anatase nanometric grains with different weight percentages of carbon nanotube (from 0.1% to 50%). We observe that only for tube concentrations between 0.1% and 2%, the growth process shows the formation of a matrix where carbon nanotubes are uniformed and dispersed in a bulk of TiO₂ grains. Moreover, the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and surface morphology analysis (conducted from AFM images) indicated that the CNT absorption is a simple physisorption without chemical bonds formations between tube and dioxide. Finally, absorption in all the visible range has the increase of about 60% at very low concentration (2%) of carbon nanotubes.

Carbon Nanotubes; Anatase; Nanocomposites; Visible Absorbance

Barberio, M. , Barone, P. , Imbrogno, A. , Bonanno, A. and Xu, F. (2014) Optical and Morphological Properties of Carbon Nanotube—Anatase Nanocomposites: Improvements in Visible Absorbance. Open Journal of Composite Materials, 4, 78-84. doi: 10.4236/ojcm.2014.41009.