Crucial Role of Oxidation Debris of Carbon Nanotubes in Subsequent End-Use Applications of Carbon Nanotubes

A facile purification method for oxidized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is developed to preserve acidic carbon compounds (ACCs) for achieving high-quality dispersion of CNTs. The remaining ACCs, which originated from the surface destruction of CNTs during the oxidation process, are considered to play a crucial role in the dispersion of CNTs in water and various polar protic solvents. To elucidate the concrete role of ACCs, a direct titration method is applied to quantitatively investigate the degree of ionization of both CNTs and ACCs in their aqueous dispersions. While ACCs with strong carboxylic groups (p K a of around 2.9) are easily removed by the neutral or base washing of oxidized CNTs, which is common in the purification process, ACC-selective purification using acid washing preserves the ACCs attached to CNTs, thereby effectively stabilizing CNT dispersions in aqueous solutions. Additionally, the Hansen solubility parameters of ACC-preserved and ACC-removed CNTs were determined by the inverse gas chromatography method to estimate their miscibility in various solvents. The preserved ACCs significantly influenced the dispersibility of CNTs in polar protic solvents, which may widen the possible application of CNTs. Specifically, the ACC-preserved high-quality CNT dispersion produces high-performance CNT buckypaper with densely packed nanostructures. The Young’s modulus and tensile strength of these buckypapers reach up to 12.0 and 91.0 MPa, respectively, which exceed those of ACC-removed CNTs in previous reports.