The influence of doping on the Raman intensity of the D band in single walled carbon nanotubes

The D band in the Raman spectra of single walled carbon nanotubes is considered as an indicator of defects in carbon nanotubes. However, its dependence on charge-transfer doping is generally ignored, despite the studied samples are often naturally doped. We studied the intensity of the D band, the ratio of the intensities of the D band and TG band (I(D)/I(TG)) and the ratio of the intensities of the D and G' band (I(D)/I(G')) in the Raman spectra of the single walled carbon nanotubes in dependence on a doping level. We tested two laser excitation energies viz 2.41 and 1.92 eV, which are in resonance with semiconducting and metallic tubes, respectively in our sample. It is shown that the D band intensity is significantly attenuated in doped carbon nanotubes sample for both semiconducting and metallic tubes. The I(D)/I(TG) ratio is weakly dependent on doping for semiconducting tubes but for metallic tubes the I(D)/I(TG) ratio exhibits strong dependence on doping. The I(D)/I(G') ratio is suggested for evaluation of the defects in carbon nanotubes samples since it is less sensitive to doping both for semiconducting and metallic tubes. Nevertheless, for highly doped samples even the I(D)/I(G') ratio exhibits significant dependence on doping level. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.