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Semiconducting enrichment of arc discharge single‐walled carbon nanotubes by density gradient ultracentrifugation
Author(s) -
Scharfenberg Linda,
Mertig Michael
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
physica status solidi (a)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.532
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1862-6319
pISSN - 1862-6300
DOI - 10.1002/pssa.201431771
Subject(s) - carbon nanotube , sonication , materials science , dispersion (optics) , pulmonary surfactant , nanotechnology , chemical engineering , optics , physics , engineering
Due to their intrinsic properties, single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are promising candidates for source‐drain channels in field‐effect transistors (FETs). However, their application in transistors requires semiconducting tubes, and thus, sorting of SWCNTs according to those. The basis for an efficient sorting is the dispersion of the material that usually includes but is not limited to applying tip sonication in the presence of appropriate amphiphilic molecules. We present a high semiconducting enrichment of surfactant‐wrapped arc discharge SWCNTs via sorting according to electronic type by applying density gradient ultracentrifugation (DGU). We utilized a common combination of anionic surfactants, but optimized the sonication time during the dispersion step of the SWCNTs and the duration of performing DGU. Furthermore, we used UV–Vis spectroscopy to determine the differences in the content of metallic (m) and semiconducting (sc) SWCNTs of different samples. By the refinement of the conditions, we have achieved an enrichment of sc‐SWCNTs up to 98% in two sorting steps.