Synthesis and Separation of Carbon Nanotubes

Our research is focused on synthesis (Chemical Vapor Decomposition (CVD), Pulse Laser Vaporization) and sorting (by length, diameter, (n, m)) of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs). SWNTs exhibit outstanding physical and chemical properties, making them excellent candidate in a wide range of applications including electronics, photonic, sensors and energy conversion. Up to now, SWNT production processes are not selective in producing only one (n, m)-species. Their applications are deeply correlated to this issue as device performances are strongly affected by SWNTs purity. Therefore post-processing approach including sorting of SWNTs is compulsory for their integration as active component in devices. For sorting SWNTs e. g. polymer wrapping is a non-destructive selective method using non-covalent and specific interactions that allows an efficient and scalable process for sorting SWNTs (n, m)-species.

Length-Sorted, Large-Diameter, Polyfluorene-Wrapped Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for High-Density, Short-Channel Transistors

ACS Nano 2016, 10, 1888−1895

Samples of highly enriched semiconducting SWCNTs with average diameters of 1.35 nm have been prepared by combining PODOF polymer wrapping with size-exclusion chromatography. The purity of the material was determined to be >99.7% from the transfer characteristics of short-channel transistors comprising densely aligned sc-SWCNTs. The transistors have a hole mobility of up to 297 cm2V−1 s−1 and an On/Off ratio as high as 2 × 108.