Electrically driven light emission from a single suspended carbon nanocoil

Electrically driven thermal radiation spectra from single suspended carbon nanocoils (CNCs) were investigated. The suspended CNC, whose structure is a hybrid between sp2 graphite-like nanocrystallites and sp3 amorphous carbon, shows thermally excited emission peaks superimposed on the blackbody radiation spectrum for wavelengths above 600 nm. It is believed that at least four pairs of energy bands exist around the Fermi energy level and the observed emission peaks are attributed to thermally-excited interband electron transitions in the CNC. Photoluminescence measurements for the CNCs show similar emission peaks to the thermally excited emission, which further supports our speculation on the electronic structure of the CNC.