Why single-walled carbon nanotubes can be dispersed in imidazolium-based ionic liquids

Spectroscopic and molecular modeling studies were performed to investigate the underlying dispersion mechanism of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in imidazolium-based ionic liquids. Both the experimental and the simulation evidence indicate that the ionic liquids interact with SWCNTs through weak van der Waals interaction other than the previous assumed "cation-pi" interaction. Therefore the electronic structure of SWCNTs in the dispersions can be kept intrinsically. The SWCNTs do not significantly influence the local structure of the imidazolium cations, though the local environment of anions adjacent to SWCNTs is somewhat perturbed because of the interfacial effect. The ionic liquids basically keep their overall bulk phase organization. A pi-pi interaction-shielding model is proposed to account for the dispersion of SWCNTs in the ionic liquids. The ionic liquids, which possess very high dielectric constants, can effectively shield the strong pi-pi stacking interaction among SWCNTs and thus evidently disperse the SWCNTs. The retaining of SWCNTs' intrinsic property and the higher SWCNT content make the ionic liquids ideal media for the study and application of SWCNTs.