(201w) Dispersion Behavior of DNA-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes Under Different Environments

Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are widely studied one-dimensional tubular nanostructures, which possess distinct handedness and helicity. Recent demonstration on carbon nanotube sorting showed the structure control of all three electronic types including semiconductors, metals, and quasi-metals via a polymer aqueous two-phase separation technique. Particularly, semiconducting nanotubes display sharp emission bands in the near-infrared (NIR) region that are highly dependent on their surrounding conditions. The NIR fluorescence of SWCNTs can be handy in distinguishing different SWCNTs species, and developing its applications in biosensing and imaging. In this work, we studied the dispersion behavior of DNA-wrapped SWCNT hybrids (DNA-SWCNTs) under various environmental conditions through monitoring the spectral shift and fluorescence intensity. Different environmental effects include variations in pH, surfactant molecules, and dispersion media. This study will be beneficial to understand the interaction of DNA-SWCNTs with various environments as well as to identify optimum conditions for the dispersion stability of specific DNA-SWCNTs in complex environments such as in biological media.