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Carbon Nanotubes for Electronics and Energy

Flavel, Benjamin S. (2018)
Carbon Nanotubes for Electronics and Energy.
Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, 2018
Habilitation, Secondary publication, Publisher's Version

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Item Type: Habilitation
Type of entry: Secondary publication
Title: Carbon Nanotubes for Electronics and Energy
Language: English
Date: 27 July 2018
Place of Publication: Darmstadt
Year of primary publication: 2018
Place of primary publication: Darmstadt
Date of oral examination: 2 July 2018
Abstract:

Ever since their discovery, carbon nanotubes have been touted as a new material for the future and a correspondingly lengthy list of possible applications are often cited in the literature. This excitement for carbon nanotubes is a result of their richly varying physical, electronic and optical properties, where it is possible to have single, double and multiple carbon walls with each wall potentially being either semiconducting or metallic and possessing unique optical transitions covering the ultraviolet to infrared spectral range. However, to date the realization of many of the proposed applications has been hindered by exactly the characteristic that made carbon nanotubes so attractive in the first place, namely the inherent inhomogeneity and varying properties of as-prepared or grown material. In order to become a true advanced material of the future, methods to prepare carbon nanotubes with defined length, wall number, diameter, electronic and optical property are necessary. Additionally, such methods to sort carbon nanotubes must afford high purity levels, be amenable to large-scale preparation and be compatible with subsequent integration into device architectures.

In this work these issues are addressed with the use of gel based sorting techniques, which with the use of an automated gel permeation system allows for the routine preparation of milligram quantities of metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes, chirality pure single walled carbon nanotubes and even double walled carbon nanotubes sorted by their outer-wall electronic type. Having developed techniques to prepare large quantities, methodologies to control the order and orientation of this 1 D nanomaterial on the macro scale are developed. Inks of carbon nanotubes with liquid crystal concentrations and aligned films thereof are developed and this newfound control over the electronic and structural property opened the door for energy related applications. For example the use of thin films as the transparent electrodes in silicon:carbon nanotube solar cells or as the light harvesting layer in combination with fullerenes with the goal of creating an all carbon solar cell. Likewise on the few nanotube level the unique optical transitions of different nanotube chiralities are used in the fabrication of nanoscale photosensitive elements.

Status: Publisher's Version
URN: urn:nbn:de:tuda-tuprints-75897
Classification DDC: 500 Science and mathematics > 500 Science
500 Science and mathematics > 540 Chemistry
Divisions: 11 Department of Materials and Earth Sciences > Material Science
11 Department of Materials and Earth Sciences > Material Science > Molecular Nanostructures
Date Deposited: 27 Jul 2018 13:55
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2024 10:17
URI: https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/id/eprint/7589
PPN: 434423971
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