title: Purification of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes by spiral counter-current chromatography.
abstract: Over the last decade man-made carbon nanostructures have shown great promise in electronic applications, but they are produced as very heterogeneous mixtures with different properties so the achievement of a significant commercial application has been elusive. The dimensions of single-wall carbon nanotubes are generally a nanometer wide, up to hundreds of microns long and the carbon nanotubes have anisotropic structures. They are processed to have shorter lengths but they need to be sorted by diameter and chirality. Thus counter-current chromatography methods developed for large molecules are applied to separate these compounds. A modified mixer-settler spiral CCC rotor made with 3 D printed disks was used with a polyethylene glycol-dextran 2-phase solvent system and a surfactant gradient to purify the major species in a commercial preparation. We isolated the semi-conducting single walled carbon nanotube chiral species identified by UV spectral analysis. The further development of spiral counter-current chromatography instrumentation and methods will enable the scalable purification of carbon nanotubes useful for the next generation electronics.
authors.affiliation: CC Biotech LLC, 12111 Parklawn Drive Rockville, MD 20852, United States. Electronic address: marthaknight@starpower.net.
authors.forename: Martha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Knight
authors.affiliation: CC Biotech LLC, 12111 Parklawn Drive Rockville, MD 20852, United States.
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lazo-Portugal
authors.affiliation: Fuzbien Technology Institute, Inc., 12111 Parklawn Drive Rockville, MD 20852, United States.
authors.forename: Saeyoung Nate
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Ahn
authors.affiliation: Fuzbien Technology Institute, Inc., 12111 Parklawn Drive Rockville, MD 20852, United States.
authors.forename: Steingrimur
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stefansson
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D003116:Color; D003377:Countercurrent Distribution / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D036103:Nanotechnology; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D011208:Powders; D012666:Semiconductors; D012996:Solutions; D012997:Solvents / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon; D011208:Powders; D012996:Solutions; D012997:Solvents
keywords: Aqueous two-phase solvent system (ATPS); Carbon nanotubes; Chiral types; Gradient counter-current chromatography (CCC); Mixer-settler rotors; Semiconductors