Events

MRI Seminar - Sorted Carbon Nanotubes and their Applications (from Photovoltaics to Sensing)

Date: Wednesday 13 November 2019 13:00 - 14:00

Location: Bancroft Building room 2.40

By Dr Benjamin Flavel, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany)
Abstract: Ever since their discovery, carbon nanotubes have been described as a material for the future and a long list of possible applications can be found in the literature. This excitement for carbon nanotubes is a result of their high mobility and richly varying electronic and optical property. However, to date the realization of many of the proposed applications has been hindered by the inherent inhomogeneity of as-grown material. In order to become a true advanced material, methods to prepare carbon nanotubes with defined length, wall number, diameter, electronic and optical property are necessary. In our work we address this issue with the use of gel based and aqueous two-phase extraction methods, which allow us to routinely sort metallic, semiconducting, and chirality pure single walled carbon nanotubes and even double walled carbon nanotubes sorted by their inner and outer-wall electronic type. Having control over their material property allows us to then investigate their use as photosensitive elements or active layers for inorganic and organic solar cells.