Solution-Processed Monodisperse Nanoelectronic Heterostructures

In this proposal, strategies for producing bulk quantities of monodisperse carbon-based nanomaterials will be developed. The core of this program will be density gradient ultracentifugation (DGU), which the PI has recently developed to sort SWNTs by their physical and electronic structure. In addition to refining the use of DGU for chiral-sorting of SWNTs, this program will extend DGU to the preparation of monodisperse DWNTs, MWNTs, single-layer graphene (SLG), bi-layer graphene (BLG), and related nanomaterials. While DGU is a scalable and economical strategy for producing bulk quantities of carbon-based nanomaterials, further improvements may be enabled by combining DGU with selective growth strategies. In particular, “epitaxial” nanomaterial growth will be pursued by utilizing monodisperse seed nanomaterials produced by DGU. Following epitaxial growth, the resulting nanomaterials can then be sorted again by DGU to provide error correction. By iterating DGU and epitaxial growth, substantial amplification in the quantity of monodisperse carbon-based nanomaterials can be achieved. The resulting monodisperse carbon-based nanomaterials will be evaluated for electronics, energy, and sensing applications. Finally, commercialization of the results of this research will be facilitated by NanoIntegris (http://www.nanointegris.com/), a start-up company that was recently founded by the PI in an effort to supply bulk quantities of high-performance carbon-based nanomaterials to industrial, academic, and government customers.