Issue 3, 2024

High-yield and chirality-selective isolation of single-walled carbon nanotubes using conjugated polymers and small molecular chaperones

Abstract

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have potential for a wide range of applications in diverse fields, but the heterogeneous properties of the synthesized mixtures of SWCNT types hinder the realization of these aspirations. Recent developments in extractive purification methods of polychiral SWCNT mixtures have somewhat gradually alleviated this problem, but either the yield or purity of the obtained fractions remains unsatisfactory. In this work, we showed the possibility of simultaneously achieving both the aforementioned goals, commonly considered mutually exclusive, via the enhancement of the capabilities of the conjugated polymer extraction (CPE) technique. We found that combining small molecular species, which alone are unwanted in the system, with a selective poly(9,9′-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl-alt-6,6′-(2,2′-bipyridine)) polymer increased the concentration of the harvested SWCNTs by an order of magnitude while maintaining near-monochiral purity of the materials. The conducted modeling revealed that the presence of these additives facilitated the folding of conjugated polymers around (6,5) SWCNTs, leading to a substantial increase in the concentration and quality of the SWCNT suspension. The obtained results lay the foundation for the widescale implementation of the CPE of usually scarcely available chirality-defined SWCNTs owing to the molecular chaperones expediting the folding of the conjugated polymers.

Graphical abstract: High-yield and chirality-selective isolation of single-walled carbon nanotubes using conjugated polymers and small molecular chaperones

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
13 oct. 2023
Accepted
14 nov. 2023
First published
22 nov. 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Mater. Horiz., 2024,11, 758-767

High-yield and chirality-selective isolation of single-walled carbon nanotubes using conjugated polymers and small molecular chaperones

D. Just, A. Dzienia, K. Z. Milowska, A. Mielańczyk and D. Janas, Mater. Horiz., 2024, 11, 758 DOI: 10.1039/D3MH01687K

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