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Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM

In this work, we identify two issues that can significantly affect the accuracy of AFM measurements of the diameter of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and propose a protocol that reduces errors associated with these issues. Measurements of the nanotube height under different applied forces dem...

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Autores principales: Vobornik, Dusan, Chen, Maohui, Zou, Shan, Lopinski, Gregory P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921789/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36770438
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano13030477
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author Vobornik, Dusan
Chen, Maohui
Zou, Shan
Lopinski, Gregory P.
author_facet Vobornik, Dusan
Chen, Maohui
Zou, Shan
Lopinski, Gregory P.
author_sort Vobornik, Dusan
collection PubMed
description In this work, we identify two issues that can significantly affect the accuracy of AFM measurements of the diameter of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and propose a protocol that reduces errors associated with these issues. Measurements of the nanotube height under different applied forces demonstrate that even moderate forces significantly compress several different types of SWCNTs, leading to errors in measured diameters that must be minimized and/or corrected. Substrate and nanotube roughness also make major contributions to the uncertainty associated with the extraction of diameters from measured images. An analysis method has been developed that reduces the uncertainties associated with this extraction to <0.1 nm. This method is then applied to measure the diameter distribution of individual highly semiconducting enriched nanotubes in networks prepared from polyfluorene/SWCNT dispersions. Good agreement is obtained between diameter distributions for the same sample measured with two different commercial AFM instruments, indicating the reproducibility of the method. The reduced uncertainty in diameter measurements based on this method facilitates: (1) determination of the thickness of the polymer layer wrapping the nanotubes and (2) measurement of nanotube compression at tube–tube junctions within the network.
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spelling pubmed-99217892023-02-12 Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM Vobornik, Dusan Chen, Maohui Zou, Shan Lopinski, Gregory P. Nanomaterials (Basel) Article In this work, we identify two issues that can significantly affect the accuracy of AFM measurements of the diameter of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and propose a protocol that reduces errors associated with these issues. Measurements of the nanotube height under different applied forces demonstrate that even moderate forces significantly compress several different types of SWCNTs, leading to errors in measured diameters that must be minimized and/or corrected. Substrate and nanotube roughness also make major contributions to the uncertainty associated with the extraction of diameters from measured images. An analysis method has been developed that reduces the uncertainties associated with this extraction to <0.1 nm. This method is then applied to measure the diameter distribution of individual highly semiconducting enriched nanotubes in networks prepared from polyfluorene/SWCNT dispersions. Good agreement is obtained between diameter distributions for the same sample measured with two different commercial AFM instruments, indicating the reproducibility of the method. The reduced uncertainty in diameter measurements based on this method facilitates: (1) determination of the thickness of the polymer layer wrapping the nanotubes and (2) measurement of nanotube compression at tube–tube junctions within the network. MDPI 2023-01-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9921789/ /pubmed/36770438 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano13030477 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Vobornik, Dusan
Chen, Maohui
Zou, Shan
Lopinski, Gregory P.
Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM
title Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM
title_full Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM
title_fullStr Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM
title_full_unstemmed Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM
title_short Measuring the Diameter of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Using AFM
title_sort measuring the diameter of single-wall carbon nanotubes using afm
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9921789/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36770438
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nano13030477
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