Acta Phys. -Chim. Sin. ›› 2012, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (07): 1790-1796.doi: 10.3866/PKU.WHXB201204174

• PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Effects of Ultrasonic Dispersion on the Separation of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

TAN Fu-Rui1,2, LI Hong-Bo1, GUI Hui1, ZHANG Jing1, LI Ru1, JIN He-Hua1   

  1. 1. Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou 215125, Jiangsu Province, P. R. China;
    2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China
  • Received:2012-02-22 Revised:2012-04-17 Published:2012-06-07
  • Contact: LI Hong-Bo E-mail:hbli2008@sinano.ac.cn
  • Supported by:

    The project was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973) (2011CB932600) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (20903069, 21073223).

Abstract:

Recently, gel chromatography has been demonstrated as an effective method for the separation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) according to their electronic type and structure. The separation of SWCNTs was thought to result from the different affinity forces between the gel and various SWCNTs. Based on this method, we investigated the effect of ultrasonic time on the dispersion and separation of metallic and semiconducting SWCNTs. At a low ultrasonic power, with the increase of ultrasonic time, better monodispersed SWCNTs in sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) aqueous solution were obtained. The UV-visible-near infrared (UV-Vis-NIR) absorption, Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopic characterizations confirmed that under the condition of ultrasonication (2 h), higher-purity metallic tubes and semiconducting tubes with different diameter distributions could be obtained. We believe that the control of the ultrasonication time may tune the mono-dispersity and the length of SWCNTs, which would further influence the difference in affinity forces between various SWCNTs and the gel, therefore leading to different separation results.

Key words: Single-walled carbon nanotube, Gel column chromatography, Dispersion, Metal/semiconductor separation, Ultrasonic time