Separation and/or selective enrichment of single-walled carbon nanotubes based on their electronic properties.
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess unique electronic properties that make them very promising materials for use in both nano-electronics and thin film devices. However, SWNTs are always produced as a mixture of metallic and semiconducting nanotubes, which is a major roadblock to their widespread application. This tutorial review provides a brief summary of ways of separating single-walled carbon nanotubes into metallic and semiconducting fractions. Various methods including selective growth, selective removal, selective adsorption and band structure modulation--all of which aim to produce pure SWNTs with well-defined electronic properties--are systematically discussed. The main problems in this field, the outlook for separation techniques and some views of future developments are presented.
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100, 190, P. R. China.
Hongliang
H
Zhang
Bin
B
Wu
Wenping
W
Hu
Yunqi
Y
Liu