Despite
the commercial availability of many different hydrogel
formulations, the effective gel-based purification of single-walled
carbon nanotubes (SWNT) remains exclusive to the gel Sephacryl S-200.
In this study, 12 commercially available gels and two custom-synthesized
gels were investigated for their ability to effectively purify SWNT,
as determined through quantification of SWNT adsorption, elution,
chiral selectivity, and overall process efficiency. The ability of
each gel to separate SWNT was found to correlate with physiochemical
properties, such as hydrogel pore size, the presence of ionic ligands,
and both polysaccharide backbone and cross-linker compositions. While
Sephacryl S-200 demonstrated superior separation efficiency and chiral
selectivity among the gels studied, Superose 6 was found to adsorb
more SWNT than Sephacryl S-200 per cm2 of the gel surface
area and exhibited a unique preference for the (7,3) and (7,5) SWNT chiralities, in contrast to the
established selectivity of Sephacryl S-200 for the (6,5) chirality. Collectively, this work both identifies gels that exhibit
unique SWNT chiral selectivity and provides insights into the rational
design of gels tailored for SWNT purification.
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