Evaluating the Degree of Macrodispersion of Carbon Nanotubes using UV-VIS-NIR Absorption Spectroscopy

We measured the degree of macrodispersion of the various single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) using UV-VIS-NIR absorption spectroscopy. CNTs were dispersed with SDS of 2 wt % in deionized water using the homogenizer and then were further centrifugated at 6000 g for 10 min. The degree of macrodispersion, expressed by $D_m({\lambda})=A_a({\lambda})/A_b({\lambda})^*100$ (%), where ${\lambda}$ is the wavelength and $A_a({\lambda})$ and $A_b({\lambda})$ are the absorbance of the sample after and before centrifugation, respectively. In the case of MWCNTs, we evaluated the degree of macrodispersion by the average degree of macrodispersion ($D_m({\lambda})$) between 1000 and 1200 nm. The degree of macrodispersion of SWCNTs was evaluated at the wavelength in which van Hove singularity-related transition regions were excluded, i.e., the range was chosen between ${E_{11}}^S$ and ${E_{22}}^S$ peaks. We have estimated six samples with the same method. The standard deviation of each sample was lower than 5. Therefore, we presented a reliable evaluation method for the macrodispersion of CNTs for standardization.