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Single functional group interactions with individual carbon nanotubes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 2, pages 692–697 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes1 display a consummate blend of materials properties that affect applications ranging from nanoelectronic circuits2 and biosensors3 to field emitters4 and membranes5. These applications use the non-covalent interactions between the nanotubes and chemical functionalities6, often involving a few molecules at a time. Despite their wide use, we still lack a fundamental understanding and molecular-level control of these interactions. We have used chemical force microscopy7 to measure the strength of the interactions of single chemical functional groups with the sidewalls of vapour-grown individual single-walled carbon nanotubes. Surprisingly, the interaction strength does not follow conventional trends of increasing polarity or hydrophobicity, and instead reflects the complex electronic interactions between the nanotube and the functional group. Ab initio calculations confirm the observed trends and predict binding force distributions for a single molecular contact that match the experimental results. Our analysis also reveals the important role of molecular linkage dynamics in determining interaction strength at the single functional group level.

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Figure 1: Measurement setup, nanotube characterization, and site-specific force spectroscopy.
Figure 2: Comparison of the measured and calculated binding strength for the interactions of chemical functional groups with CNTs.
Figure 3: Electron density analysis of the NH2-functionalized tip interacting with a (14,0) CNT sidewall.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Hope-Weeks, N. Zaitseva (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, LLNL) and S. Peleshanko (Iowa State University) for technical assistance and T. Sulchek (LLNL) for discussions. A.N. acknowledges LDRD SI funding, and G.G. acknowledges support from DOE grant DE-FG02-06ER46262, V.V.T. and M.C.L. acknowledge funding from AFOSR, FA9550-05-1-0209 and NSF-NIRT-0506832 grants, and A.B.A. and R.W.F. acknowledge LLNL SEGRF Program support. J.C.G. is grateful for partial support from NSF Grant No. EEC-0425914. This work was performed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under the auspices of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.

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Author notes

  1. Melburne C. Lemieux

    Present address: Present address: Chemical Engineering Department, Stanford University, 381 North-South Mall, Stanford, California 94305, USA,

  2. Raymond W. Friddle and Melburne C. Lemieux: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemistry Materials and Life Science Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, 94550, California, USA

    Raymond W. Friddle, Melburne C. Lemieux, Alexander B. Artyukhin & Aleksandr Noy

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 771 Ferst Drive, N.E., Atlanta, 30332, Georgia, USA

    Melburne C. Lemieux & Vladimir V. Tsukruk

  3. Physics Department, Politecnico of Torino, C.so Duca Degli Abruzzi 24, 10129, Torino, Italy

    Giancarlo Cicero

  4. Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Jeffrey C. Grossman

  5. University of California, One Shields Ave, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    Giulia Galli

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Contributions

A.N., V.V.T., G.G. and J.C.G. conceived the experiments. R.W.F, M.C.L., A.B.A. and A.N. performed the experiments, and analysed the data. G.C., J.C.G. and G.G. performed computer simulations. A.N., R.W.F., G.C. and G.G. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Raymond W. Friddle, Melburne C. Lemieux or Aleksandr Noy.

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Friddle, R., Lemieux, M., Cicero, G. et al. Single functional group interactions with individual carbon nanotubes. Nature Nanotech 2, 692–697 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2007.334

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