Carbon Nanotube-Purification and Sorting Protocols

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have shown extraordinary mechanical, thermal, electrical, and electronic properties. Electronic properties of CNT are very sensitive to its diameter and chirality, making it metallic or semiconducting, depending upon its chiral vector. The extraordinary properties of CNTs have led to demonstration of several applications but commercial realisation of these devices require consistent quality of CNTs, and these should be free of any impurity. For development of electronic devices, CNTs should not just be pure but also of similar length, diameter, and electronic behaviour. Such demanding requirements need development of elaborate purification and sorting protocols. In this paper, a brief review of the existing technologies and the research done is presented.