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High-yield and low-cost separation of high-purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes with closed-loop recycling of raw materials and solvents

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Abstract

Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNTs) are the foundation of CNT-based electronics and optoelectronics. For practical applications, s-SWCNTs should be produced with high purity, high structural quality, low cost, and high yield. Currently conjugated polymer wrapping method shows great potential to fulfill these requirements due to its advantages of simple operation process, high purity separation, and easy scaling-up. However, only a small portion of both CNTs and polymers go into the final solution, and most of them are discarded after a single use, resulting in high cost and low yield. In this paper, we introduce a closed-loop recycling strategy, in which raw materials (CNTs and polymers) and solvents were all recycled and reused for multiple separation cycles. In each cycle, high-purity (> 99.9%) s-SWCNTs were obtained with no significant change of structural quality. After 7 times of recycling and separation, the material cost was reduced to ∼ 1% in comparison with commercially available products, and total yield was increased to 36% in comparison with 2%–5% for single cycle separation. Our proposed closed-loop recycling strategy paves the way for low-cost and high-yield mass production of high-quality s-SWCNTs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (No. 2016YFA0201902), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51991341), Young Talents Program of Beijing (No. 2018000020028G349), and the Open Research Fund of Key Laboratory of Space Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. LSU-KFJJ-2020-06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Carbon-Based Electronics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Fang Liu, Xingxing Chen, Haoming Liu, Jie Zhao, Meiqi Xi, Hongshan Xiao, Tongkang Lu, Yu Cao, Yan Li, Lianmao Peng & Xuelei Liang

  2. Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Fang Liu, Xingxing Chen, Jie Zhao, Meiqi Xi, Hongshan Xiao, Tongkang Lu, Yu Cao, Lianmao Peng & Xuelei Liang

  3. College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Haoming Liu & Yan Li

  4. Shanxi Institute for Carbon-Based Thin Film Electronics, Peking University (SICTFE-PKU), Taiyuan, 030012, China

    Yu Cao, Yan Li, Lianmao Peng & Xuelei Liang

  5. Taiyuan Laboratory for Carbon-Based Thin Film Electronics, Taiyuan, 030012, China

    Yu Cao, Yan Li, Lianmao Peng & Xuelei Liang

Authors
  1. Fang Liu
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  2. Xingxing Chen
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  3. Haoming Liu
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  4. Jie Zhao
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  7. Tongkang Lu
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  8. Yu Cao
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  9. Yan Li
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  10. Lianmao Peng
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  11. Xuelei Liang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yu Cao or Xuelei Liang.

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12274_2021_3671_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

High-yield and low-cost separation of high-purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes with closed-loop recycling of raw materials and solvents

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Liu, F., Chen, X., Liu, H. et al. High-yield and low-cost separation of high-purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes with closed-loop recycling of raw materials and solvents. Nano Res. 14, 4281–4287 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3671-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3671-x

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