Abstract: Recently, plenty of attention has been paid to the dispersion of carbon nanotubes by amphiphilic molecules. In this paper, different mechanisms for a non-covalent dispersion of carbon nanotubes are summarized from the three fields of surfactants, polymers, and biomacromolecules. Ionic surfactants or polyelectrolytes mainly depend on an electrostatic repulsion between hydrophilic groups to prevent carbon nanotube aggregation while non-ionic surfactants or polymers mainly rely on a steric stabilization of hydrophilic groups to disperse the carbon nanotubes.

Key words: Carbon nanotube, Dispersion, Surfactant, Polymer, Biomacromolecule