Abstract
Carbon nanotube (CNT) is a promising material as nano sensors for mechanical and physiological measurement. Although there are many studies on mechanical and thermal properties of a single CNT in vacuum, thermal conductivity of the single CNT in liquid are not well investigated. Here, we propose measurement of thermal conductivity of a single CNT in liquid using optical assembly and fluorescent temperature measurement in liquid. Roles of the sensors are temperature sensing and heat input to the CNT by infrared laser. The sensors are fixed to both CNT edges by optical tweezers and heated by infrared laser. Thermal conductivity was evaluated by measuring the temperature variation of each sensor and calculating heat quantity passing through the CNT. In this paper, we demonstrated assembly of CNT and nanosensors and measurement of thermal conductivity of CNT in liquid. From experiments, average thermal conductivity of a single CNT in liquid was (3.2 ± 0.6) × 10^3 [W/mK].
