Revealing the Substructure of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Fibers

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• 作者：Yuhuang Wang ; Lars M. Ericson ; Carter Kittrell ; Myung Jong Kim ; Hongwei Shan ; Hua Fan ; Steve Ripley ; Sivarajan Ramesh ; Robert H. Hauge ; W. Wade Adams ; Matteo Pasquali ; and Richard E. Smalley
• 刊名：Chemistry of Materials
• 出版年：2005
• 出版时间：December 13, 2005
• 年：2005
• 卷：17
• 期：25
• 页码：6361 - 6368
• 全文大小：799K
• 年卷期：v.17,no.25(December 13, 2005)
• ISSN：1520-5002

文摘

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) uniquely combine characteristics of polymers (e.g., theyare molecules composed of repeat units) as well as nanoscale colloids (e.g., they are extremely stiff);because of these characteristics, they may qualify as the ideal building blocks for the long-soughtStaudinger's "continuous crystal." To this end, neat SWNT fibers have been produced by wet-spinningconcentrated dispersions of 6-10 wt % SWNTs in 102% H₂SO₄. A unique protocol that combined UV-ozone dry chemical etching and cryoultramicrotoming was developed to directly visualize the internalvoids, alignment, and composition of these SWNT neat fibers. A substructure of large aligned SWNTropes, 200-500 nm in diameter, was revealed throughout the fibers. This substructure may be linked tothe SWNT spaghetti, threadlike liquid-crystalline domains observed in dispersions of SWNTs in H₂SO₄.