Note: Detecting flow velocity with high purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

We report the measurement of fluid velocity on a semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes film in a microfluidic channel. To investigate the mechanism related to electrical signal change, we performed various experiments along with changing the flow velocity, the ion concentration and liquid viscosity, etc. Our result suggests that the sensing of flow velocity is a closely related to a pulsating asymmetrical thermal ratchet model. The electric signal change was strongly dependent on the electrode alignment, and the channel width of the sample. As the result, we achieved highly sensitive detection of the fluid, roughly 4 times greater than previous results. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4797620]