Structural discrimination of double-walled carbon nanotubes by chiral diporphyrin nanocalipers

Gang Liu (1) , Yukie Saito (2) , Daisuke Nishio-Hamane (2) , Ajoy K. Bauri (3) , Emmanuel Flahaut (4) , Takahide Kimura (1) , Naoki Komatsu (1)

1 Shiga University of Medical Science
2 UTokyo - The University of Tokyo
3 BARC - Bhabha Atomic Research Centre
4 CIRIMAT - Centre interuniversitaire de recherche et d'ingénierie des matériaux

In this contribution, we demonstrate the separation of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) by host–guest methodology. New chiral diporphyrin nanocalipers with a longer spacer ([similar]1.9 nm) consisting of carbazole–pyrene–carbazole are rationally designed as a host on the basis of the previous chiral diporphyrin nanocalipers with carbazole–anthracene–carbazole spacer ([similar]1.4 nm). The chiral nanocalipers are found to recognize the diameter of DWNTs to make diameter distribution much narrower. In addition, the extracted carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibited circular dichroism (CD) after removal of the chiral nanocalipers and dissolution in water in the presence of achiral surfactant.

Keywords: Double-walled carbon nanotubes; Diporphyrin; Nanocalipers

Domains: Material chemistry; Materials

Gang Liu, Yukie Saito, Daisuke Nishio-Hamane, Ajoy K. Bauri, Emmanuel Flahaut, et al.. Structural discrimination of double-walled carbon nanotubes by chiral diporphyrin nanocalipers. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2014, vol. 2 (n° 44), pp. 19067-19074. ⟨10.1039/c4ta04407j⟩. ⟨hal-01138706⟩