Nonionic Electrophoretic Sorting of SWCNTs into Metallic and Semiconducting Tubes

摘要

We present our preliminary results on a novel technique to electrophoretically sort single-wall carbon nanotubes into metallic and semiconducting tubes using a free-solution nonionic surfactant in a homemade electrophoretic vertical cell. The technique is used to sort purified commercial product SWCNTs, (Thomas Swan Elicarb) into metallic and semiconducting tubes. In contrast to conventional electrophoresis techniques, which takes more than 24 hours to obtain efficient separation, our approach takes ～6 hours to achieve efficient separation, which reduces the separation time by four fold. Characterization of the sorted tubes with micro-Raman spectroscopy analysis shows very strong enrichment of both metallic and semiconducting tubes.