College Park, Maryland      June 6 - 10 , 2004

ACNS Home Meeting Announcement Committees and Contacts Registration Abstract Submission Travel Reimbursement Dates to Remember

WP14: Small angle neutron scattering from single-wall carbon nanotube suspensions: evidence for isolated rigid rods and rod networks

W. Zhou (MSE Dept., U. Penn.), M. F. Islam (Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, U. Penn.), H. Wang (MSE Dept., Michigan Tech), D. L. Ho (NIST Center for Neutron Research), A. G. Yodh (Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, U. Penn.), K. I. Winey, J. E. Fischer (MSE Dept., U. Penn.)

We report small angle neutron scattering (SANS) from dilute suspensions of purified individual single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in D₂O with added sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (NaDDBS) ionic surfactant. The scattered intensity scales as Q^-1 for scattered wave vector, Q, in the range 0.005 < Q < 0.02 Å^-1. The Q^-1 behavior is characteristic of isolated rigid rods. A crossover of the scattered intensity power law dependence from Q^-1 to Q^-2 is observed at ~0.004 Å^-1, suggesting the SWNTs form a loose network at 0.1 wt% with a mesh size of ~160 nm. SANS profiles from several other dispersions of SWNTs do not exhibit isolated rigid rod behavior; evidently the SWNTs in these systems are not isolated and form aggregates.

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