A gel permeation chromatography system is used to separate aqueous sodium dodecyl sulfate suspensions of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). This automated procedure requires no precentrifugation, is scalable, and is found to yield monochiral SWCNT fractions of semiconducting SWCNTs with a purity of 61-95%. Unsorted and resulting monochiral fractions are characterized using optical absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy.
In
this work, a comprehensive methodology for the fitting of single-walled
carbon nanotube absorption spectra is presented. Different approaches
to background subtraction, choice of line profile, and calculation
of full width at half-maximum are discussed both in the context of
previous literature and the contemporary understanding of carbon nanotube
photophysics. The fitting is improved by the inclusion of exciton–phonon
sidebands, and new techniques to improve the individualization of
overlapped nanotube spectra by exploiting correlations between the
first- and second-order optical transitions and the exciton–phonon
sidebands are presented. Consideration of metallic nanotubes allows
an analysis of the metallic/semiconducting content, and a process
of constraining the fit of highly congested spectra of carbon nanotube
solid films according to the spectral weights of each (n, m) species in solution is also presented, allowing
for more reliable resolution of overlapping peaks into single (n, m) species contributions.
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