Surfactant-Carbon Nanotube Self-Assembly in Aqueous Solution

The discovery of carbon nanotubes offeers exciting opportunities for the development of novel high property materials. However, disaggregation and formation of the Uniform suspensions are critical challenges that must be met to successfully produce such high property materials, since carbon nanotubes tend to self-associate into micro-scale aggregates. Recent advances indicate that ultrasonicating carbon nanotube dispersions stabilized by surfactants is an effective way to produce uniform suspensions. For further perfecting this procedure it is essential to know how surfactants adsorb on nanotube surfaces. Here we report an atomic-level molecular dynamics (MD)simulation for the self-assembly of Dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB) surfactant on single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) surfaces at room conditions. We make an effort to clarify the role of the surfactant concentration on the morphology of aggregate formed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide ، Carbon nanotube ، Molecular dynamic simulation