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Carbon nanotubes

Nanotubes reveal all in solution

Nature Chemistry volume 1, pages 182–183 (2009)Cite this article

Enhancing the solubility of single-walled carbon nanotubes through non-covalent bonds has led to an improvement in our ability to probe and understand their interactions with electron donors and acceptors.

One can say that diamonds are forever; others say that they are a girl's best friend. However, for scientists working on photovoltaic cells (devices designed to directly transform sunlight into electricity) another allotrope of carbon is the real jewel: carbon nanotubes (CNTs). CNTs are sheets of graphite, specifically hexagonal networks of carbon atoms, which have been rolled up into a cylindrical shape. They come in two basic varieties: multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs), which are concentric cylinders placed around a common central hollow, with a spacing between the layers of about 0.34 nm; and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), which are single-layer cylinders extending from end to end, as their name suggests1. Most of today's research concentrates on SWNTs because they are easier to characterize spectroscopically and to image by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and have high potential for use in electronic and photovoltaic devices. Depending on the arrangement of the hexagonal rings along the tubular surface, the conductivity of SWNTs varies between metallic and semiconducting. Theoretically, nanotubes can carry an electrical current density of 4 × 109 A cm−2, which is more than 1,000 times greater than metals such as copper2.

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Figure 1: Two examples of electron donor–acceptor systems based on supramolecular interactions between pyrene derivatives and single-walled carbon nanotubes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David I. Schuster and Jackson D. Megiatto Jr are in the Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA. david.schuster@nyu.edu; jackson.megiatto@nyu.edu,

    David I. Schuster & Jackson D. Megiatto Jr

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  1. David I. Schuster
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  2. Jackson D. Megiatto Jr
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Schuster, D., Megiatto, J. Nanotubes reveal all in solution. Nature Chem 1, 182–183 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.223

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