Nanotube Alignment Using Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

A new method for the successful alignment of carbon nanotubes is presented. An aqueous lyotropic nematic liquid-crystal phase acts as a self-organizing template to align and disperse the nonfunctionalized nanotubes simultaneously, and the success of the method is confirmed through Raman spectroscopy analysis (see figure). This work could be extended to allow tailoring of the alignment for specific purposes and properties, using different lyotropic liquid crystals.

[1]  G. W. Gray,et al.  Handbook of Liquid Crystals Set , 1998 .

[2]  V. C. Moore,et al.  Individually suspended single-walled carbon nanotubes in various surfactants , 2003 .

[3]  S. Tans,et al.  Room-temperature transistor based on a single carbon nanotube , 1998, Nature.

[4]  Mainak Majumder,et al.  Nanoscale hydrodynamics: Enhanced flow in carbon nanotubes , 2005, Nature.

[5]  C. Joachim,et al.  Combing a carbon nanotube on a flat metal-insulator-metal nanojunction , 1999 .

[6]  P. McEuen,et al.  A tunable carbon nanotube electromechanical oscillator , 2004, Nature.

[7]  Arjun G. Yodh,et al.  High Weight Fraction Surfactant Solubilization of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes in Water , 2003 .

[8]  Michael D. Lynch,et al.  Organizing Carbon Nanotubes with Liquid Crystals , 2002 .

[9]  Prashant V Kamat,et al.  Self-assembled linear bundles of single wall carbon nanotubes and their alignment and deposition as a film in a dc field. , 2004, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[10]  Siegmar Roth,et al.  Single-Molecule Torsional Pendulum , 2005, Science.

[11]  E. Terentjev,et al.  Nematic elastomers with aligned carbon nanotubes: New electromechanical actuators , 2003, cond-mat/0309216.

[12]  C. Hierold,et al.  Fabrication of single-walled carbon-nanotube-based pressure sensors. , 2006, Nano letters.

[13]  Howard Wang,et al.  Shear-SANS study of single-walled carbon nanotube suspensions , 2005 .

[14]  E. Kymakis,et al.  High open-circuit voltage photovoltaic devices from carbon-nanotube-polymer composites , 2003 .

[15]  T. Chou,et al.  Advances in the science and technology of carbon nanotubes and their composites: a review , 2001 .

[16]  Husnu Emrah Unalan,et al.  Conducting and transparent single-wall carbon nanotube electrodes for polymer-fullerene solar cells , 2005 .

[17]  R. Smalley,et al.  Neat macroscopic membranes of aligned carbon nanotubes , 2003 .

[18]  M. Roukes,et al.  A nanometre-scale mechanical electrometer , 1998, Nature.

[19]  Lyotropic Liquid Crystals , 1994 .

[20]  S. Stupp,et al.  Anisotropic Properties of Conducting Polymers Prepared by Liquid Crystal Templating , 2004 .

[21]  R. Smalley,et al.  Magnetically aligned single wall carbon nanotube films: preferred orientation and anisotropic transport properties , 2003 .

[22]  S. Sushanth Kumar,et al.  Polyacrylonitrile Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotube Composite Fibers , 2004 .

[23]  V. C. Moore,et al.  Band Gap Fluorescence from Individual Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes , 2002, Science.

[24]  M. Dresselhaus,et al.  Physical properties of carbon nanotubes , 1998 .

[25]  T. Kijima,et al.  Noble-metal nanotubes (Pt, Pd, Ag) from lyotropic mixed-surfactant liquid-crystal templates. , 2004, Angewandte Chemie.

[26]  P. Braun,et al.  Lyotropic Liquid Crystals as Nanoreactors for Nanoparticle Synthesis , 2004 .

[27]  Paul L. McEuen,et al.  High Performance Electrolyte Gated Carbon Nanotube Transistors , 2002 .

[28]  A. M. Baró,et al.  Soluble Self‐Aligned Carbon Nanotube/Polyaniline Composites , 2005 .

[29]  Bingqing Wei,et al.  Miniaturized gas ionization sensors using carbon nanotubes , 2003, Nature.

[30]  T. Ebbesen,et al.  Supramolecular Self-Assembly of Lipid Derivatives on Carbon Nanotubes , 2003, Science.

[31]  Alan H. Windle,et al.  Nematic Liquid Crystallinity of Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes , 2003, Science.

[32]  Maurizio Prato,et al.  Single-wall carbon nanotubes as integrative building blocks for solar-energy conversion. , 2005, Angewandte Chemie.

[33]  A. Saupe,et al.  Liquid crystalline phases of the sodium decylsulfate/decanol/water system. Nematic-nematic and cholesteric-cholesteric phase transitions , 1980 .

[34]  M. Maugey,et al.  Liquid Crystals of DNA‐Stabilized Carbon Nanotubes , 2005 .

[35]  I. Hamley,et al.  Nanotechnology with soft materials. , 2003, Angewandte Chemie.

[36]  I. Kinloch,et al.  Mesogenicity drives fractionation in lyotropic aqueous suspensions of multiwall carbon nanotubes. , 2006, Nano letters.

[37]  Mark A. Billadeau,et al.  Carbon Nanotube‐Based Biosensor , 2003 .

[38]  Piero Morales,et al.  Aligning and Reorienting Carbon Nanotubes with Nematic Liquid Crystals , 2004 .

[39]  Rajesh K. Saini,et al.  Phase Behavior and Rheology of SWNTs in Superacids , 2004 .

[40]  P. Alsing,et al.  Electric field tuning of plasmonic response of nanodot array in liquid crystal matrix. , 2005, Nano letters.

[41]  M. Burghard,et al.  Polarized raman spectroscopy on isolated single-wall carbon nanotubes. , 2000, Physical review letters.

[42]  R. Bandyopadhyaya,et al.  Stabilization of Individual Carbon Nanotubes in Aqueous Solutions , 2002 .

[43]  T. A. Taton,et al.  Micelle-encapsulated carbon nanotubes: a route to nanotube composites. , 2003, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[44]  L. Q. Amaral,et al.  Nematic domain in the sodium lauryl sulfate/water/decanol system , 1988 .