Dithiafulvenyl-grafted phenylene ethynylene polymers as selective and reversible dispersants for single-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Phenylene ethynylene-based π-conjugated polymers grafted with dithiafulvenyl groups on their side chains were found to be efficient in dispersing single-walled carbon nanotubes in a selective and controllable way.

Conjugated polymer sorting of semiconducting carbon nanotubes and their electronic applications

“…Conjugated polymers have also been extensively investigated for the sorting of HiPco SWNTs. [48,49,85,[90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109] Several of them can sort very specific chirality of SWNTs. Nish et al [48] and Chen et al [85] first observed that PFO (P1, Figure 3a) enriches small-diameter (8,6) SWNTs, whereas F8BT (P3, Figure 3a) enriches larger-diameter (10,5) SWNTs (Figure 3c,d, Table 2).…”

The role of the solvent and the size of the nanotube in the non-covalent dispersion of carbon nanotubes with short organic oligomers – a DFT study

“…18,19 Zhao and co-workers showed that phenylene ethynylene and phenylene vinylene oligomers endcapped with dithiafulvenyl (DTF) groups interact strongly with single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) and act as good dispersants. 20,21 They also showed that tetrathiafulvalene vinylogue uorene co-oligomers interact with SWCNTs but not as strong as phenylene ethynylene and phenylene vinylene oligomers. 22 In their work, the dispersion outcomes are highly solventdependent as the studied DTF-oligomers effectively disperse SWCNTs and form stable black suspensions in chloroform and less effectively in methylene chloride whereas in chlorobenzene, toluene, and hexane no effective dispersion is obtained.…”

“…These computational ndings agree well with experimental results. [20][21][22] In the experimental work, [20][21][22] the commercially available HiPCO (high-pressure carbon monoxide) SWCNTs with a diameter rage of $0.75-1.2 nm were used, and found to be dispersed effectively by oligo(OPE-DTF)s (but less effectively by oligo(DPF-DTF)s). The relatively large molecular sizes of both oligo(OPE-DTF)s and oligo(DPF-DTF)s facilitated the dispersion of HiPCO nanotubes with a range of chiral indices {(6,5), (7,5), (7,6), (8,3), (8,4), (8,6), (8,7), (9,4), (9,5), (10,2) and (10,3)} corresponding to diameter range of 0.75-1.05 nm.…”

Switching the optical and electrical properties of carbon nanotube hybrid films using a photoresponsive dispersant as a dopant

“…First, an azobenzene-derived cationic molecule with the triuoromethanesulfonyl anion (AB, Scheme 1), a photoresponsive dispersant, was synthesised in two steps with an overall yield of 85%. The synthesized AB exhibited good dispersibility of SWCNT in polar organic solvent as previously reported dispersants, [26][27][28] and photoisomerisation between the trans to cis states by irradiation of UV or visible lights in propylene carbonate (PC) solution (Fig. S1 †).…”