Stable and responsive fluorescent carbon nanotube silica gels

Conference · Mon May 03 04:00:00 EDT 2010

OSTI ID:1010660

Dattelbaum, Andrew M ^[1]; Gupta, Gautam ^[1]; Doorn, Stephen K ^[1]; Duque, Juan G ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

Here we report a general route to prepare silica nanocomposite gels doped with fluorescent single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT). We show that tetramethylorthosilicate (TMOS) vapors can be used to gel an aqueous suspension of surfactant-wrapped SWNT while maintaining fluorescence from the semiconducting nanotubes. The vapor phase silica process is performed at room temperature and is simple, reproducible, relatively quick, and requires no dilution of SWNT dispersions. However, exposure of aqueous SWNT suspensions to TMOS vapors resulted in an acidification of the suspension prior to gelation that caused a decrease in the emission signal from sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) wrapped SWNT. We also show that although the SWNT are encapsulated in silica the emission signal from the encapsulated SWNT may be attenuated by exposing the nanocomposites to small aromatic molecules known to mitigate SWNT emission. These results demonstrate a new route for the preparation of highly luminescent SWNT/silica composite materials that are potentially useful for future sensing applications.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1010660
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-10-02891; LA-UR-10-2891
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
ACIDIFICATION
AROMATICS
CARBON
COMPOSITE MATERIALS
DILUTION
FLUORESCENCE
GELATION
NANOTUBES
SILICA
SILICA GEL
SODIUM