applied sciences Article The Use of Gravity Filtration of Carbon Nanotubes from Suspension to Produce Films with Low Roughness for Carbon Nanotube/Silicon Heterojunction Solar Device Application Tom S. L. Grace 1, Christopher T. Gibson 1 , Jason R. Gascooke 1 and Joseph G. Shapter 1,2,* 1 Flinders Microscopy and Microanalysis, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Bedford Park, Adelaide, SA 5042, Australia; tom.grace@flinders.edu.au (T.S.L.G.); Christopher.gibson@flinders.edu.au (C.T.G.); jason.gascooke@flinders.edu.au (J.R.G.) 2 Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 17 August 2020; Accepted: 9 September 2020; Published: 15 September 2020 Featured Application: Transparent electrodes are critical in many applications. This work probes an approach to make highly conducting, highly transparent electrodes using carbon nanotubes. Abstract: The morphology of carbon nanotube (CNT) films is an important factor in the performance of CNT/silicon (CNT/Si) heterojunction solar devices. Films have generally been prepared via vacuum filtration from aqueous suspensions. Whilst this enables strong films to be formed quickly, they are highly disordered on the micron scale, with many charge traps and gaps forming in the films. It has been previously established that lowering the filtration speed enables more ordered films to be formed. The use of slow gravity filtration to improve the morphology of CNT films used in the CNT/Si device is reported here. It was found that slow filtration causes significant macroscale inhomogeneity in the CNT films, with concentrated thick regions, surrounded by larger thinner areas.