What is it about?
Carbon comes in different forms, including those of diamond and graphite, but also as fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and graphene. Each one of these materials is entirely made out of carbon atoms with extraordinary properties that scientist can exploit for different usage depending on the necessity. Interestingly enough, diamond is one of the hardest materials known to man, while graphite is the complete opposite of that, all thanks to their unique intrinsic properties.
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Why is it important?
Carbon nanotubes are extremely small cylindrical forms of carbon, that can be employed in a wide variety of applications that range from nanoelectronics, sensors, catalysis and composite materials to name some. Bulk production of carbon nanotubes results in the introduction of impurities. The presence of such impurities can lead to undesired effects, such as toxicity in some cases but can also affect and even dominate the properties of the material. Therefore there is a need to purify carbon nanotubes and to determine the amount of metal impurities.
Perspectives
We provide an straight forward strategy to quantify the iron content in purified samples of carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes are simply purified with steam (hot water) and an acid treatment. We believe that both of these strategies can be easily employed in any laboratory.
Gerard Tobías-Rossell
Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC)
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: UV-Vis quantification of the iron content in iteratively steam and HCl purified single-walled carbon nanotubes, PLoS ONE, May 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303359.
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