Stark effect of excitons in individual air-suspended carbon nanotubes

We investigate electric-field induced redshifts of photoluminescence from individual single-walled carbon nanotubes. The shifts scale quadratically with field, while measurements with different excitation powers and energies show that effects from heating and relaxation pathways are small. We attribute the shifts to the Stark effect and characterize nanotubes with different chiralities. By taking into account exciton binding energies for air-suspended tubes, we find that theoretical predictions are in quantitative agreement. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.