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Nano Research 2021, 14(11): 4281-4287 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3671-x
Research Article | Issue | Published: 04 July 2021

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

Show Author's Information Fang Liu1,2,  Xingxing Chen1,2,  Haoming Liu1,3,  Jie Zhao1,2,  Meiqi Xi1,2,  Hongshan Xiao1,2,  Tongkang Lu1,2,  Yu Cao1,2,4,5( ),  Yan Li1,3,4,5,  Lianmao Peng1,2,4,5,  Xuelei Liang1,2,4,5( )
Center for Carbon-Based Electronics Peking University Beijing 100871 China
Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices Department of Electronics Peking University Beijing 100871 China
College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering Peking University Beijing 100871 China
Shanxi Institute for Carbon-Based Thin Film Electronics Peking University (SICTFE-PKU) Taiyuan 030012 China
Taiyuan Laboratory for Carbon-Based Thin Film Electronics Taiyuan 030012 China
Keywords:
carbon nanotubes, low-cost, closed-loop recycling, high-yield, high purity
Topics:
Carbon nanotubes
Cite this article:
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 Research, 2021, 14(11): 4281-4287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3671-x
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

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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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

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

Show Author's information Fang Liu1,2, Xingxing Chen1,2, Haoming Liu1,3, Jie Zhao1,2, Meiqi Xi1,2, Hongshan Xiao1,2, Tongkang Lu1,2, Yu Cao1,2,4,5( ), Yan Li1,3,4,5, Lianmao Peng1,2,4,5, Xuelei Liang1,2,4,5( )
Center for Carbon-Based Electronics Peking University Beijing 100871 China
Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices Department of Electronics Peking University Beijing 100871 China
College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering Peking University Beijing 100871 China
Shanxi Institute for Carbon-Based Thin Film Electronics Peking University (SICTFE-PKU) Taiyuan 030012 China
Taiyuan Laboratory for Carbon-Based Thin Film Electronics Taiyuan 030012 China

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.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes, low-cost, closed-loop recycling, high-yield, high purity

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 17 April 2021
Revised: 02 June 2021
Accepted: 08 June 2021
Published: 04 July 2021
Issue date: November 2021

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (Nos. 2016YFA0201902 and 2016YFA0201904), 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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