Abstract
Because of their emission in the near infrared region, Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes remain among the most attractive nanomaterials for (opto)electronics, optics and photonics.1-3 However, the extreme sensitivity of nanotubes to their environment hinders their applications. Thus, the fabrication of tailor-made functional hybrid materials that preserve the optical properties of SWNTs and facilitate their manipulation is extremely important. One route to take advantage of the protection offered by polymers is to synthesize core/shell nanostructures in which the nanotube is the active core and the polymer, tightly bound to the nanotubes, acts as a protective shell.
Here, we describe the synthesis of core-shell nanotube materials made of SWNTs and polystyrene. We developed a two-step strategy that permits to form a stable and homogeneous layer of polymer around the nanotubes by adding first polystyrene via the micelle swelling method and then by locking the structure via radical polymerisation in micelles of styrene and divinylbenzene. After polymerisation and redispersion, the nanotube hybrids can be easily manipulated in solution; they still exhibited photoluminescence properties both in solution and in the solid state demonstrating that the SWNTs embedded in their polystyrene shell are isolated one from each other.4,5
References
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Figure 1