Optical and Morphological Properties of Carbon Nanotube—Anatase Nanocomposites: Improvements in Visible Absorbance

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.