Tunable Assembly of Superfine Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Fibers

We have developed a method of spinning superfine single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) fibers to facilitate their assembly in 2D counter microelectrode array via alternating current (AC) dielectrophoresis (DEP) by using clean, combination of ionic surfactants, and stable SWNT aqueous high-quality solutions. Our method can attract metallic SWNTs (M_SWNTs) toward a counter microelectrode array, resulting in an opposite movement of semiconducting SWNTs (S_SWNTs) and leaving S_SWNTs in the suspension by taking advantages of the differences in the relative dielectric constants of M_SWNTs and S_SWNTs with respect to the suspension and substrate-bent AC DEP structure. Our method can also control the stretching or relaxed extent and diameters of the suspended SWNT fibers by tuning the bending degree of a flexible substrate, AC frequency, peak value of AC voltage, and time. The effectiveness of the method is proven by the electrical measurement result, scanning electron microscopy image, atomic force microscope image and Raman spectroscopy on test samples.