Abstract
Lyotropic nematic aqueous suspensions of single-wall carbon nanotubes can be uniformly aligned in thin cells by shearing. Homogeneous anisotropic thin films of nanotubes can be prepared by drying the nematic. Optical transmission between parallel or crossed polarizers is measured and described in order to estimate the dichroic ratio. The order parameter is measured using polarized Raman spectroscopy and found to be quite weak due to entanglement of the nanotubes and/or to an intrinsic viscoelastic behavior of the nanotube suspensions.