Anion Exchange Resins for Chirality-based Separation of Single-wall Carbon Nanotubes

Single chirality of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) is critical for their superb mechanical, thermal, optical and electronic properties. All known methods for producing nanotubes give mixtures of tubes with different chiralities. Physical separation of SWCNT by chirality is thus an enabling step for many potential applications and fundamental studies. The existing anion exchange resins are only partially effective for SWCNT chirality separations, with low recovery (30%) and short column life time (20 injections). Sepax Technologies, Inc. proposes to develop a new anion-exchange resin to drastically improve chirality resolution of SWCNTs. Sepax will apply its proven surface technology to in-house made uniform non-porous polystyrene/divinyl benzene beads to obtain resins with well-controlled density and distribution of charged functional groups and hydrophobic/hydrophilic characteristics, then pack into columns to achieve two technical objectives: 1) separation recovery of SWCNT samples higher than 85%; 2) resolving in a single pass (9,1) and (6,5) chirality tubes from commercial SWCNT starting materials with narrow diameter distribution.