TY - JOUR
T1 - Length-Selective Dielectrophoretic Manipulation of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes
AU - Rabbani, Mohammad T.
AU - Schmidt, Christoph F.
AU - Ros, Alexandra
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank. P. Vana, Georg August University Göttingen, for giving us the access to a Zetasizer Nano Zs instrument, and Peng Wentao, Georg August University Göttingen, for technical help. Financial support from the National Science Foundation (USA) project no. 1149015 and supplement no. 1444430 by the Chemical and Biological Separations Program in the Chemical, Environmental, Bioengineering, and Transport Systems Division in Mathematical and Physical Sciences is gratefully acknowledged. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007- 2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 340528. We gratefully acknowledge further financial support from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, Germany, through a fellowship awarded to A. Ros.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2020/7/7
Y1 - 2020/7/7
N2 - Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess unique physical, optical, and electrical properties with great potential for future nanoscale device applications. Common synthesis procedures yield SWNTs with large length polydispersity and varying chirality. Electrical and optical applications of SWNTs often require specific lengths, but the preparation of SWNTs with the desired length is still challenging. Insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) integrated into a microfluidic device has the potential to separate SWNTs by length. Semiconducting SWNTs of varying length suspended with sodium deoxycholate (NaDOC) show unique dielectrophoretic properties at low frequencies (<1 kHz) that were exploited here using an iDEP-based microfluidic constriction sorter device for length-based sorting. Specific migration directions in the constriction sorter were induced for long SWNTs (≥1000 nm) with negative dielectrophoretic properties compared to short (≤300 nm) SWNTs with positive dielectrophoretic properties. We report continuous fractionation conditions for length-based iDEP migration of SWNTs, and we characterize the dynamics of migration of SWNTs in the microdevice using a finite element model. Based on the length and dielectrophoretic characteristics, sorting efficiencies for long and short SWNTs recovered from separate channels of the constriction sorter amounted to >90% and were in excellent agreement with a numerical model for the sorting process.
AB - Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess unique physical, optical, and electrical properties with great potential for future nanoscale device applications. Common synthesis procedures yield SWNTs with large length polydispersity and varying chirality. Electrical and optical applications of SWNTs often require specific lengths, but the preparation of SWNTs with the desired length is still challenging. Insulator-based dielectrophoresis (iDEP) integrated into a microfluidic device has the potential to separate SWNTs by length. Semiconducting SWNTs of varying length suspended with sodium deoxycholate (NaDOC) show unique dielectrophoretic properties at low frequencies (<1 kHz) that were exploited here using an iDEP-based microfluidic constriction sorter device for length-based sorting. Specific migration directions in the constriction sorter were induced for long SWNTs (≥1000 nm) with negative dielectrophoretic properties compared to short (≤300 nm) SWNTs with positive dielectrophoretic properties. We report continuous fractionation conditions for length-based iDEP migration of SWNTs, and we characterize the dynamics of migration of SWNTs in the microdevice using a finite element model. Based on the length and dielectrophoretic characteristics, sorting efficiencies for long and short SWNTs recovered from separate channels of the constriction sorter amounted to >90% and were in excellent agreement with a numerical model for the sorting process.
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U2 - 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c00794
DO - 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c00794
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087160923
SN - 0003-2700
VL - 92
SP - 8901
EP - 8908
JO - Analytical Chemistry
JF - Analytical Chemistry
IS - 13
ER -