Synthesis of Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes

D. ACEVEDO; J. BALACH; M. C. MIRAS; C. BARBERO

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Workshop; Max Planck Sponsored Workshop; 2007

Carbon nanotubes have attracted great interest in the field of physics, chemistry and material science due to their unique properties as well as their promise in the area of material chemistry. [1,2] One promising application of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWNT) is their use in chemical sensors and nanoscale electronic device. Such potential application would greatly benefit from the ability of MWNT to promote the electron transfer reaction of important biomolecules, including cytochrome c, [3] NADH, [4] catecholamine neurotransmitters. [5] To build electrochemical devices, the nanotubes should be deposited High Throughput Screening (HTS) of nanotube dispersion by non covalent interaction with aromatic dyes Nanotubes with dye 1 Nanotubes without dye neurotransmitters. To build electrochemical devices, the nanotubes should be deposited onto conventional electrode materials (glassy carbon, ITO), from nanotube solutions or stable dispersions. The major barrier to produce useful devices is the solubility of the MWNT. It is known that it is possible to improve solubilization of MWNTs using two different methods. One involves covalent modification by Gomberg reaction of the aromatic rings in MWNTs with diazonium salts. [6] The other imply the non-covalent interaction with soluble conductive polymers. In the later method we use combinatorially modified polyanilines [7] where a wide variety of polymers is available. An alternative non covaent interaction is with small aromatic dyes. The MWNTs were functionalized and their solubility in different solvents were tested. Using modified polyanilines is also possible to introduce novel properties, such as luminiscence, which are useful in biological applications of the carbon t b Dye 1 p-aminosulfonic Acid 2-Naphthol 0.33 0.67 1.00 Normalized Intensity λ ex = 300 nm Fluorescence Spectroscopy Fluorescence Microscopy MWNT modified with Quantum dots nanotubes.