Toward the Extraction of Single Species of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Using Fluorene-Based Polymers

Abstract

High purity of (7,5) SWNTs (approximately 79% of the semisonducting SWNT ensemble) can be obtained by polymer-assisted extraction from the narrow-diameter distributed SWNTs produced by the catalyst Co-MCM-41. The fluorene-based polymers are able to selectively wrap the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with certain chiral angles or diameters depending on their chemical structures. Poly(9,9-dioctyfluoreny1-2, 7-diyl) and poly[(9,9-dihexylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-co-(9,10-anthracene)] selectively wrap SWNTs with high chiral angles (>24.5 degrees). By contrast, poly[9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-co-1,4-benzo-{2,1'-3}-thiadiazole)] preferentially wraps the SWNTs with certain diameter (1.02-1.06 nm).

Microscopic and Spectroscopic Investigation of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Interaction with Carbon Nanotubes

“…The structural self-organization of conjugated polymers on nanotube surface has been recently modeled by Gotovac et al [24] and Chen et al [25]. The strong π-π bonds interaction is believed to bring the alignment of the polymer backbone along the nanotube axis or along directions with large coiling angles.…”

Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes sorting with a removable solubilizer based on dynamic supramolecular coordination chemistry

“…In order to preserve the intrinsic SWNT properties, the latter method has an advantage over the former one. Recently, various methods for the separation of sem-and met-SWNTs including wrapping by SWNT solubilizers, such as DNAs 20,21 and p-conjugated or non-conjugated copolymers 11,[22][23][24] , density gradient ultracentrifugation 25,26 and gel chromatography techniques 12,14,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] , have been reported. However, the reported techniques are rather complex and the efficiency is not very high.…”

“…Polyfluorene-based copolymers (PFOs) 30,31 have been intensively studied because they dissolve/extract only semSWNTs in toluene by a simple sonication method. We have previously demonstrated a rational method for the selective extraction of a specific chirality of the sem-(n,m) SWNTs using a series of systematically designed fluorene-based copolymers [32][33][34] .…”

“…Moreover, we revealed that the PFO copolymers with a bulky optically active moiety could separate the right-and left-handed sem-SWNTs 35 . However, there are several serious problems when using PFOs; that is, difficulty in the removal of the wrapped PFOs from the SWNT/PFO composites 36,37 as well as their low extraction efficiency from the as-produced SWNTs 30,31 .…”

The Unlikely Surfactant: DNA as a Ligand for Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

“…For example, hybridization between strands of partly DNA-wrapped SWCNTs has been reported to induce the formation of aggregates (Figure 5a). Furthermore, hybrid structures of SWCNTs and gold nanoparticles (AuNP) have been generated, based on hybridization (see Figure 5b) (Chen et al, 2007 b). The new materials were analyzed by gel electrophoresis, dynamic light scattering (DLS), optical absorption spectroscopy, and atomic force microscopy (AFM).…”