Engineering Supramolecular Polymer Conformation for Efficient Carbon Nanotube Sorting
Abstract
Supramolecular polymer sorting is a promising approach to separating single‐walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by electronic type. Unlike conjugated polymers, they can be easily removed from the CNTs after sorting by breaking the supramolecular bonds, allowing for isolation of electronically pristine CNTs as well as facile recycling of the sorting polymer. However, little is understood about how supramolecular polymer properties affect CNT sorting. Herein, chain stoppers are used to engineer the conformation of a supramolecular sorting polymer, thereby elucidating the relationship between sorting efficacy and polymer conformation. Through NMR and UV–vis spectroscopy, small‐angle X‐ray scattering (SAXS), and thermodynamic modeling, it is shown that this supramolecular polymer exhibits ring–chain equilibrium, and that this equilibrium can be skewed toward chains by the addition of chain stoppers. Furthermore, by controlling the stopper–monomer ratio, the sorting yield can be doubled from 7% to 14% without compromising the semiconducting purity (>99%) or properties of sorted CNTs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jun 05, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1002/smll.202000923
Entities
People
- Hongping Yan
- Hung‐chin Wu
- Theodore Gao
- Xuzhou Yan
- Ze-Hao Sun
- Zhenan Bao
Organizations
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences
- Office of Science
- Peking University
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- Stanford University
- United States Department of Defense
- United States Department of Energy