A facile method to coat mesoporous silica layer on carbon nanotubes by anionic surfactant

This paper described a facile sol–gel method to synthesize silica-coated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) using anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) for the first time. This method is quite simple and easy to operate, the uniformly silica shell could be a readily controlled ratio of two silane agents of 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and tetraethoxysilane, and more suitable for large-scale production. The resulting CNTs@SiO2 composites are characterized by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. It is of interest to note that the mesoporous CNTs@SiO2 materials can be obtained via the extraction or the calcination process and mesoporous property was investigated by N2 adsorption–desorption analysis.