Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 11 submissions in the queue.

Submission Preview

Link to Story

Researchers Develop New Way to Purify Carbon Nanotubes

Accepted submission by takyon at 2016-08-17 18:09:34
Science

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/mu-mr081616.php [eurekalert.org]

Researchers at McMaster University have [developed] a new way to purify carbon nanotubes - the smaller, nimbler semiconductors that are expected to replace silicon within computer chips and a wide array of electronics. "Once we have a reliable source of pure nanotubes that are not very expensive, a lot can happen very quickly," says Alex Adronov, a professor of Chemistry at McMaster whose research team has developed a new and potentially cost-efficient way to purify carbon nanotubes.

[...] While previous researchers had created polymers that could allow semiconducting carbon nanotubes to be dissolved and washed away, leaving metallic nanotubes behind, there was no such process for doing the opposite: dispersing the metallic nanotubes and leaving behind the semiconducting structures. Now, Adronov's research group has managed to reverse the electronic characteristics of a polymer known to disperse semiconducting nanotubes - while leaving the rest of the polymer's structure intact. By so doing, they have reversed the process, leaving the semiconducting nanotubes behind while making it possible to disperse the metallic nanotubes.

Influence of Polymer Electronics on Selective Dispersion of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes [wiley.com] (DOI: 10.1002/chem.201603553)


Original Submission