Researchers at the University of Turku, Finland, have succeeded in producing sensors from single-wall carbon nanotubes that could enable major advances in health care, such as continuous health monitoring. Single-wall carbon nanotubes are nanomaterial consisting of a single atomic layer of graphene.
A long-standing challenge in developing the material has been that the nanotube manufacturing process produces a mix of conductive and semi-conductive nanotubes which differ in their chirality, i.e., in the way the graphene sheet is rolled to form the cylindrical structure of the nanotube. The electrical and chemical properties of nanotubes are largely dependent on their chirality.
Han Li, Collegium Researcher in materials engineering at the University of Turku, has developed methods to separate nanotubes with different chirality. In the current study, published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, the researchers succeeded in distinguishing between two carbon nanotubes with very similar chirality and identifying their typical electrochemical properties.