@article{Preston2015, 
author = {Colin Preston and Da Song and Jaiqi Dai and Zois Tsinas and John Bavier and John Cumings and Vince Ballarotto and Liangbing Hu},
title = {Scalable nanomanufacturing of surfactant-free carbon nanotube inks for spray coatings with high conductivity},
year = {2015},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {8},
number = {7},
pages = {2242-2250},
keywords = {carbon nanotubes, surfactant-free ink, spray coating, high conductivity, zeta potential},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.1007/s12274-015-0735-9},
doi = {10.1007/s12274-015-0735-9},
abstract = {Spray-coated carbon nanotube films offer a simple and printable solution for fabricating low cost, lightweight, and flexible thin-film electronics. However, current nanotube spray inks require either a disruptive surfactant or destructive surface functionalization to stabilize dispersions at the cost of the electrical properties of the deposited film. We demonstrate that high-purity few-walled carbon nanotubes may be stabilized in isopropanol after surface functionalization and that optimizing the ink stability dramatically enhances the conductivity of subsequent spray-coated thin films. We consequently report a surfactant-free carbon nanotube ink for spray-coated thin films with conductivities reaching 2, 100 S/cm. Zeta-potential measurements, used to quantify the nanotube ink dispersion quality, directly demonstrate a positive correlation with the spraycoated film conductivity, which is the key metric for high-performance printed electronics.}
}