Enriching high-purity semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNTs) is essential to thin film transistors. Efforts have been made and achievements are obvious. However, these high pure s-SWCNTs are usually covered with dense dispersants, such as polymers and surfactants, which may largely affect performance of transistors. Therefore, harvesting s-SWCNTs with removable dispersants is important. But it remains a challenge.
Prof. LI Qingwen’s group from SINANO synthesized a photodegradable molecule, presenting high selectivity to s-SWCNTs and stronge dispersion ability, which improved largely on both charge-mobility (30–80 cm2 V-1 s-1) and on-off ratio (104–106) of transistors. This photodegradable molecule belongs to heteroacene derivatives, denoted as 4HP.
Fig. 1 Structure of 4HP and absorption spectra of its CNTs dispersion. (Image by LI Qingwen's group)
4HP can be easily remove from CNTs suface. After irradiation under a laser beam at 365 nm or blue light with 10 watt power, the 4HP solution will be faded into a light yellow solution in 15 minutes.
Fig. 2 Degrading process of 4HP and CNTs diameter before and after degradation. (Image by LI Qingwen's group)
This research was generously supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 21373262, 61274130) and Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (Grant No. ZR2014BQ015). The financial support is from AcRF Tier 1 (RG 16/12 and RG RG133/14) and Tier 2 (ARC 20/12 and ARC 2/13) from MOE, and CREATE program (Nanomaterials for Energy and Water Management) from NRF, Singapore.
Contact information: Prof. QIU Song
Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics ,Chinese Academy of Science
Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, China.
E-mail: sqiu2010@sinano.ac.cn
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