Deep Eutectic Solvent Assisted Dispersion of Carbon Nanotubes in Water
Name
fchem-08-00808.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.66 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
00a5a5300977cb5b49a65136a72870eb
Author(s)
Zaib, Qammer
Adeyemi, Idowu
Warsinger, David M
AlNashef, Inas M
Date Issued
September 17, 2020
Journal
Frontiers in Chemistry
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Citation
Zaib Q, Adeyemi I, Warsinger DM and AlNashef IM (2020) Deep Eutectic Solvent Assisted Dispersion of Carbon Nanotubes in Water. Front. Chem. 8:808.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) are emerging as a promising medium for many chemical processes. They can be used to observe specific properties required for nanomaterials' applications. Controlled CO2 adsorption requires disaggregation of carbon nanotubes into smaller bundles which can be accomplished by dispersing them in aqueous DES system. In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) was adopted to examine the impacts of three important factors on the dispersion of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in Choline Chloride-Glycerol (ChCl-Gly) DES; (i) ChCl-Gly (mass% in water), (ii) sonication energy input (J/mL), and (iii) SWNTs' concentration (mg/L). The net negative surface charge of ChCl-Gly, a “green solvent,” provided superior dispersion of inherently negatively charged SWNTs in water via electrostatic repulsion. The impacts of the dispersion factors were quantified by the average aggregate diameter (nm) and polydispersity (polydispersity index, PDI) of SWNTs in aqueous-DES systems. Models were developed, experimentally verified, and statistically validated to map the impacts of these factors and to obtain optimized dispersions. The optimized dispersions, characterized by the small (<100 nm) and uniform (<0.1 PDI) SWNTs' aggregates, were achieved at lower sonication energy costs which can have promising implications across many nano-manufacturing fields. The dispersion/aggregation mechanism was proposed using COSMO-RS (based on equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum chemistry) modeling of ChCl-Gly and zeta potential measurements of SWNTs. This understanding will help create optimally sustainable and economically feasible DES-nanomaterial dispersions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2020.00808
