Length distribution of single walled carbon nanotubes determined by ac atomic force microscopy

TL;DR

This paper presents a straightforward AFM-based method for dispersing and measuring the length distribution of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes, emphasizing the importance of tuning AC modes for accurate discrimination.

Contribution

It introduces a simple AFM technique with optimized AC mode tuning to accurately determine the length distribution of individual SWCNTs.

Findings

Effective dispersion of SWCNTs on flat substrates.

Successful discrimination between individual nanotubes and small bundles.

Reported length distribution data for SWCNTs.

Abstract

A simple method to disperse individual single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT ) on an atomically flat substrate is presented. Proper tuning of ac modes of atomic force microscopes(AFM) is discussed. This is needed to discriminate between individual nanotubes and very small bundles. The distribution of lengths of the nanotubes measured by these methods is reported.