Separation of Large‐Diameter Metallic and Semiconducting Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Iterative Temperature‐Assisted Gel‐Column Chromatography for Enhanced Device Applications

Abstract

It is a challenging and application‐oriented goal to achieve the metal/semiconductor separation of large diameter single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) using a dextran‐based gel chromatograph. Herein, a study of the temperature effect on the metal/semiconductor separation of plasma torch SWCNTs through dextran‐based gel chromatograph is conducted. The temperature governs the interaction between SWCNTs and hydrogel, thus enabling the sorting of SWCNTs by electronic type. In addition, the temperature effect enables the metallic (m‐) and semiconducting (sc‐) fraction to be resolved and eluted using a single cosurfactant system, so that the process can be iterated easily. The fractions containing up to 99% of sc‐SWCNTs and 95% of m‐SWCNTs have been obtained after three times of iteration. The iteration process is not only applicable to sc‐SWCNTs and m‐SWCNTs, but also practicable for the cosurfactant system and circumvents additional preparation steps.