Purity Evaluation of As-Prepared Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Soot by Use of Solution-Phase Near-IR Spectroscopy

Abstract

We report a rapid, quantitative procedure for the evaluation of the carbonaceous purity of bulk quantities of as-prepared single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) soot by the utilization of solution-phase near-IR spectroscopy. The procedure starts with two steps of homogenization followed by solution/dispersion spectroscopy of a representative part of the bulk sample. The purity is evaluated against a reference sample by utilizing the region of the second interband transition (S22) for semiconducting SWNTs. The procedure is found to be capable of reliably analyzing the carbonaceous purity of a 10-g batch of SWNTs produced by the electric arc discharge method to within 3%.