Separation of Metallic Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes and Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Agarose Gel Electrophoresis

Agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) is one of the low-cost and large-scale separation techniques for the separation of metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes (m-SWCNTs) and semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNTs). The separated m-SWCNTs were divided into several parts and characterized by the UV-visible-near infrared absorption spectra and the Raman spectra respectively. The results show that the moieties with the fastest electrophoresis migration rate contain more m-SWCNTs. Furthermore, the effects of different agarose concentrations on the separation efficiencies of SWCNTs were investigated. It was found that higher concentration of agarose gel was beneficial to the enrichment of the m-SWCNTs, and the separation efficiency of the m-SWCNTs could be realized by increasing the charge density on the surface of the SWCNTs.