Isolation of single-walled carbon nanotube enantiomers by density differentiation

• DOI: 10.1007/s12274-009-9006-y
• Publication Date: 2009-01-12T05:07:12Z
• Authors: Alexander A. Green; Matthew C. Duch; Mark C. Hersam
• Keywords: Materials Science(all); Electrical and Electronic Engineering; 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

Current methods of synthesizing single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) result in racemic mixtures that have impeded the study left- and right-handed SWNTs. Here we present a method isolating different SWNT enantiomers using density gradient ultracentrifugation. Enantiomer separation is enabled by chiral surfactant sodium cholate, which discriminates between SWNTs thus induces subtle differences their buoyant densities. This sorting strategy can be employed for simultaneous enrichment handedness roll-up vector having diameters ranging from 0.7 to 1.5 nm. In addition, circular dichroism enantiomer refined samples enables identification high-energy optical transitions