Hydrogel Composition Effects on Performance as Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Purification Media

Hydrogel microsphere media allows for postsynthetic purification of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), affording characterization and application of their unique (n,m) chirality-dependent properties. This work reports the characterization of five hydrogel resins, Sephacryl S-100, S-200, S-300, S-400, and S-500, and the implementation of each as a SWNT purification medium. The physiochemical properties of each resin were explored spectroscopically through elemental analyses and with both light and electron microscopy. Both surface porosity and hydrogel swelling ratio were found to increase as the concentration of component allyl dextran (aDEX) decreased, each with an increasing Sephacryl S-number. Conversely, invariant properties included a hydrogel microsphere size distribution and concentrations of components methylenebisacrylamide and ammonium persulfate. When employed within gel-based SWNT purification schemes in overloading conditions, Sephacryl formulations of larger S-number adsorbed fewer SWNTs, but the chirality dependence of SWNT adsorption and elution was approximately consistent across all resins. In underloading conditions, approximately one-third of introduced SWNTs passed through each resin unabsorbed, while the resins showed varying chirality-dependent adsorption efficiencies. These observations collectively identify aDEX-rich gel regions as being responsible for SWNT purification, along with a SWNT-exclusive parameter other than chirality (speculated as length) that convolutes the effectiveness of gel-based single-chirality purification.