Separation of Double-Walled Carbon Nanotubes with Sensitivity to the Electronic Property of the Inner wall

尽管双壁碳纳米管（DWCNT）与单壁碳纳米管具有许多相同的独特特性，但由于存在第二壁，它们还具有一系列额外的潜在优势，正是这些特性使它们具有集成到新器件中的吸引力。 例如，长期以来一直设想DWCNT可以用于传感器，其中外壁可以被化学官能化，同时使内壁处于其原始状态并可用于信号转导。 然而，到目前为止，这些目标的实现受到单壁碳纳米管（SWCNT）社区所经历的相同挑战的限制，即，原始的、所生产的DWCNT材料的固有异质性。 与SWCNT类似，DWCNT的组成壁可以是半导体（S）或金属（M），并且这产生内壁@外壁的四种可能组合，即M@M、M@S、S@M和S@S。 到目前为止，已经实现了对外壁电子类型的控制，但是“圣杯”仍然是制备具有限定的内壁和外壁的DWCNT材料。该项目旨在解决这一挑战，并利用可扩展的解决方案处理技术来制备大量的分类DWCNT。 与以前的方法相反，所提出的技术对DWCNT的电子类型（受内壁和外壁类型的组合的影响）敏感，并且将允许内壁@外壁选择性。此外，该项目不仅对内壁和外壁的电子类型有选择性，而且对它们的手性类型也有选择性。

Despite double walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) sharing many of the same unique characteristics of their single-walled counterparts, they also have an additional suite of potential advantages due to the presence of a second wall, and it are these properties which make them attractive for integration into new devices. For example, it has long been envisaged that DWCNTs could be used in sensors, where the outer wall could be chemically functionalized whilst leaving the inner wall in its pristine state and available for signal transduction. However, the realization of these goals has so far been limited by the same challenge experienced by the single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) community, namely, the inherent heterogeneity of raw, as-produced DWCNT material. Similar to SWCNTs, the constituent walls of a DWCNT can either be semiconducting (S) or metallic (M) and this gives rise to four possible combinations of inner@outer wall, namely; M@M, M@S, S@M and S@S. To date, control over the electronic type of the outer-wall has been achieved, however the ‘holy grail’ remains to prepare DWCNT material with defined inner and outer wall. This project is aimed at addressing this challenge and utilizes scalable solution-processing techniques to prepare large quantities of sorted DWCNTs. Contrary to previous methodologies the proposed techniques are sensitive to the electronic type of a DWCNT (influenced by the combination of inner and outer wall type) and will allow for inner@outer wall selectivity. Furthermore, this project will be selective to not only the electronic type of the inner and outer wall but also their chiral type.