Based on their unique electrical and mechanical properties carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted great attention in recent years. A diverse array of methods has been developed to modify CNTs and to assemble them into devices. Based on these innovations many applications that include the use of CNTs have been demonstrated. Transparent electrodes for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), lithium ion batteries, supercapacitors, and CNT-based electronic components such as field effect transistors (FETs) have been demonstrated. Furthermore, CNTs have been employed in catalysis and sensing as well as filters and mechanical and biomedical applications. This review highlights illustrative examples from these areas to give an overview of applications of CNTs.
This research was supported (in part) by the U.S. Army Research Office under contract W911NF-07-D-0004. B.E. is grateful to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina for a postdoctoral fellowship (LPDS 2009-8). We thank S. L. Buchwald for the usage of computational resources, J. J. Walish for fabricating the device holder, and J. G. Weis for SEM measurements.Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW under http://dx.
This communication describes a simple solvent-free method for fabricating chemoresistive gas sensors on the surface of paper. The method involves mechanical abrasion of compressed powders of sensing materials on the fibers of cellulose. We illustrate this approach by depositing conductive layers of several forms of carbon (e.g., single-walled carbon nanotubes [SWCNTs], multi-walled carbon nanotubes, and graphite) on the surface of different papers (Figure 1, Figure S1). The resulting sensors based on SWCNTs are capable of detecting NH3 gas at concentrations as low as 0.5 part-per-million.
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