title: Uniform, homogenous coatings of carbon nanohorns on arbitrary substrates from common solvents.
abstract: We demonstrate a facile technique to electrophoretically deposit homogenous assemblies of single-walled carbon nanohorns (CNHs) from common solvents such as acetone and water onto nearly any substrate including insulators, dielectrics, and three-dimensional metal foams, in many cases without the aid of surfactants. This enables the generation of pristine film-coatings formed on time scales as short as a few seconds and on three-dimensional templates that enable the formation of freestanding polymer-CNH supported materials. As electrophoretic deposition is usually only practical on conductive electrodes, we emphasize our observation of efficient deposition on nearly any material, including nonconductive substrates. The one-step versatility of deposition on these materials provides the capability to directly assemble CNH materials onto functional surfaces for a broad range of applications. In this manner, we utilized as-deposited CNH films as conductometric gas sensors exhibiting better sensitivity in comparison to equivalent single-walled carbon nanotube sensors. This gives a route toward scalable and inexpensive solution-based processing routes to manufacture functional nanocarbon materials for catalysis, energy, and sensing applications, among others.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering and ‡Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee, United States.
authors.forename: Landon
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Oakes
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Westover
authors.forename: Masoud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mahjouri-Samani
authors.forename: Shahana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chatterjee
authors.forename: Alexander A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Puretzky
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rouleau
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Geohegan
authors.forename: Cary L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Pint