@phdthesis{Kastner2020,
  author    = {Kastner, Matthias J.},
  title     = {Spectroscopic investigation of molecular adsorption and desorption from individual single-wall carbon nanotubes},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-21175},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-211755},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Nanoelectronics is an essential technology for down-scaling beyond the limit of silicon-based electronics. Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWNT) are semiconducting components that exhibit a large variety of properties that make them usable for sensing, telecommunication, or computational tasks. Due to their high surface to volume ratio, carbon nanotubes are strongly affected by molecular adsorptions, and almost all properties depend on surface adsorption. SWNT with smaller diameters (0.7-0.9nm) show a stronger sensitivity to surface effects. An optimized synthesis route was developed to produce these nanotubes directly. They were produced with a clean surface, high quality, and large lengths of 2 μ m. The results complement previous studies on larger diameters (0.9-1.4nm). They allow performing statistically significant assumptions for a perfect nanotube, which is selected from a subset of nanotubes with good emission intensity, and high mechanical durability. The adsorption of molecules on the surface of carbon nanotubes influences the motion and binding strength of chargeseparated states in this system. To gain insight into the adsorption processes on the surface with a minimum of concurrent overlapping effects, a microscopic setup, and a measurement technique were developed. The system was estimated to exhibit excellent properties like long exciton diffusion lengths (>350nm), and big exciton sizes (8.5(5)nm), which was substantiated by a simulation. We studied the adsorption processes at the surface of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes for molecules in the gas phase, solvent molecules, and surfactant molecules. The experiments were all carried out on suspended individualized carbon nanotubes on a silicon wafer substrate. The experiments in the gas-phase showed that the excitonic emission energy and intensity experiences a rapid blue shift during observation. This shift was associated with the spontaneous desorption of large clusters of gaseous molecules caused by laser heat up. The measurement of this desorption was essential for creating a reference to an initially clean surface and allows us to perform a comparison with previous measurements on this topic. Furthermore, the adsorption of hydrogen on the nanotube surface at high temperatures was investigated. It was found that a new emission mode arises slightly red-shifted to the excitonic emission in these systems. The new signal is almost equally strong as the main excitonic peak and was associated with the brightening of dark excitons at sp3-defects through a K-phonon assisted pathway. The finding is useful for the direct synthesis of spintronic devices as these systems are known to act as single-photon emitters. The suspended nanotubes were further studied to estimate the effect of solvent adsorption on the excitonic states during nanotube dispersion for each nanotube individually. A significant quantum yield loss is observable for hexane and acetonitrile, while the emission intensity was found to be the strongest in toluene. The reference to a clean surface allowed us to estimate the exact influence of the dielectric environment of adsorbing solvents on the excitonic emission energy. Solvent adsorption was found to lead to an energy shift that is almost twice as high as suggested in previous studies. The amount of this energy shift, however, was comparably similar for all solvents, which suggests that the influence of the distinct dielectric constant in the outer environment less significantly influences the energy shift than previously thought. An interesting phenomenon was found when using acetonitrile as a solvent, which leads to greatly enhanced emission properties. The emission is more than twice as high as in the same air-suspended nanotubes, which suggests a process that depends on the laser intensity. In this study, it was reasonably explained how an energy down-conversion is possible through the coupling of the excitonic states with solvent vibrations. The strength of this coupling, however, also suggests adsorptions to the inside of the tubular nanotube structure leading to a coupled vibration of linear acetonitrile molecules that are adsorbed to the inner surface. The findings are important for the field of nanofluidics and provide an excellent system for efficient energy down-conversion in the transmission window of biological tissue. Having separated the pure effect of solvent adsorption allowed us to study the undisturbed molecular adsorption of polymers in these systems. The addition of polyfluorene polymer leads to a slow but stepwise intensity increase. The intensity increase is overlapping with a concurrent process that leads to an intensity decrease. Unfortunately, observing the stepwise process has a low spacial resolution of only 100-250nm, which is in the range of the exciton diffusion length in these systems and hinders detailed analysis. The two competing and overlapping processes processes are considered to originate from slow π-stacking and fast side-chain binding. Insights into this process are essential for selecting suitably formed polymers. However, the findings also emphasize the importance of solvent selection during nanotube dispersion since solvent effects were proven to be far more critical on the quantum yield in these systems. These measurements can shed light on the ongoing debate on polymers adsorption during nanotube individualization and allow us to direct the discussion more towards the selection of suitable solvents. This work provides fundamental insights into the adsorption of various molecules on the surface of individually observed suspended Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes. It allows observing the adsorption of individual molecules below the optical limit in the solid, liquid, and gas phases. Nanotubes are able to act as sensing material for detecting changes in their direct surrounding. These fundamental findings are also crucial for increasing the quantum yield of solvent-dispersed nanotubes. They can provide better light-harvesting systems for microscopy in biological tissue and set the base for a more efficient telecommunication infrastructure with nano-scale spintronics devices and lasing components. The newly discovered solvent alignment in the nanotube surrounding can potentially also be used for supercapacitors that are needed for caching the calculation results in computational devices that use polymer wrapped nanotubes as transistors. Although fundamental, these studies develop a strategy to enlighten this room that is barely only visible at the bottom of the nano-scale.},
  subject      = {Kohlenstoff-Nanor{\"o}hre},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Namal2018,
  author    = {Namal, Imge},
  title     = {Fabrication and Optical and Electronic Characterization of Conjugated Polymer-Stabilized Semiconducting Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes in Dispersions and Thin Films},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-162393},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {In order to shrink the size of semiconductor devices and improve their efficiency at the same time, silicon-based semiconductor devices have been engineered, until the material almost reaches its performance limits. As the candidate to be used next in semiconducting devices, single-wall carbon nanotubes show a great potential due to their promise of increased device efficiency and their high charge carrier mobilities in the nanometer size active areas. However, there are material based problems to overcome in order to imply SWNTs in the semiconductor devices. SWNTs tend to aggregate in bundles and it is not trivial to obtain an electronically or chirally homogeneous SWNT dispersion and when it is done, a homogeneous thin film needs to be produced with a technique that is practical, easy and scalable. This work was aimed to solve both of these problems. In the first part of this study, six different polymers, containing fluorene or carbazole as the rigid part and bipyridine, bithiophene or biphenyl as the accompanying copolymer unit, were used to selectively disperse semiconducting SWNTs. With the data obtained from absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy of the corresponding dispersions, it was found out that the rigid part of the copolymer plays a primary role in determining its dispersion efficiency and electronic sorting ability. Within the two tested units, carbazole has a higher π electron density. Due to increased π-π interactions, carbazole containing copolymers have higher dispersion efficiency. However, the electronic sorting ability of fluorene containing polymers is superior. Chiral selection of the polymers in the dispersion is not directly foreseeable from the selection of backbone units. At the end, obtaining a monochiral dispersion is found to be highly dependent on the used raw material in combination to the preferred polymer. Next, one of the best performing polymers due to high chirality enrichment and electronic sorting ability was chosen in order to disperse SWNTs. Thin films of varying thickness between 18 ± 5 to 755o±o5 nm were prepared using vacuum filtration wet transfer method in order to analyze them optically and electronically. The scalability and efficiency of the integrated thin film production method were shown using optical, topographical and electronic measurements. The relative photoluminescence quantum yield of the radiative decay from the SWNT thin films was found to be constant for the thickness scale. Constant roughness on the film surface and linearly increasing concentration of SWNTs were also supporting the scalability of this thin film production method. Electronic measurements on bottom gate top contact transistors have shown an increasing charge carrier mobility for linear and saturation regimes. This was caused by the missing normalization of the mobility for the thickness of the active layer. This emphasizes the importance of considering this dimension for comparison of different field effect transistor mobilities.},
  subject      = {Feldeffekttransistor},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Li2015,
  author    = {Li, Han},
  title     = {Fabrication of Carbon Nanotube Thin Films by Evaporation-Induced Self-Assembly},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-123407},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  pages     = {159},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {In summary, we have prepared single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) thin films by the method of evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA). Using the scalable two-plate or lens setups, sorts of different film types or patterns of SWNTs has been successfully fabricated directly from the evaporation of solvents and could be precisely controlled by the concentrations of SWNT in ambient conditions. The special geometry of meniscus as the capillary bridge has not only given rise to a much higher efficiency of fabrication than what previously reported but also allowed us to monitor the pinning and depinning process carefully and further investigate the mechanism underlying the formation of different film morphologies. In contrast with the conventional "stick-slip" model, we have provided the new dynamical pinning and zipping model for the contact line (CL) behavior. By analyzing the motion of CL and varying deposited patterns, the traditionally so-called "stick" state should be treated as a dynamical pinning process due to the interfacial tension contrast between SWNT-covered and bare silicon surface. Besides, the plausible one-step "slip" motion could be dominated by the zipping-like kink propagation. In addition, the experiments with heated substrates at higher temperatures between 30°C and 50 °C have shown that the striped pattern could be fabricated by both much lower SWNT and SDS concentrations than that in room temperature, which is consistent with our model of interfacial tension contrast. In this situation, the deposition rate was increased but the quality of SWNT alignment was undermined because the corresponding moving velocity of SWNT was also too fast for SWNTs to rotate when the evaporative rate was high. The similar results were identified by the SWNT/polymer conjugates dispersed in chloroform under the similar setups and other identical conditions. The typical breathing motion of dynamical pinning and zipping-like propagation for depinning were confirmed by the new suspensions despite that some morphological parameters changed dramatically compared with that from the aqueous solution. For example, the spacing between stripes reached 100 µm ~ 200 µm because the large contact angle contrast between HDMS- and SWNT-covered surface accompanies with the high evaporation rate of chloroform in the pinning and depinning process. Likewise the average CL velocity for fabrication reached around 20 µm/s due to the much higher evaporation rate of chloroform than water. Using alike suspensions, the modified EISA method called dose-controlled floating evaporative self-assembly (DFES) was employed to implement the self-assembly of SWNTs on the water/air interface and then deposit them on solid substrate by directed floating. Although the stripes were fabricated successfully by drops with certain doses and SWNT concentrations, there inevitably existed randomly oriented SWNTs from the water surface that built networks between the stripes containing well-aligned tubes. In order to slow down the evaporation rate and monitor the process detailedly, we used chlorobenzene as the solvent instead of chloroform and find the typical pinning/depinning movement of the CL. A preliminary analysis of the results in terms of chlorobenzene implied that the CL possibly followed the similar pinning/depinning process in consistence with our model with capillary bridge. In the last part of the thesis, the primary research on the optical properties of these stripes of ultrahigh purity semiconducting nanotubes was conducted by fluorescence microscopy and photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectroscopy. The energy transfer of the photogenerated excitons was confirmed between different tube species with controlled band gaps. In short, the experiments performed in this thesis allowed to gain new insights about the fabrication of large-area SWNT thin films by the cost-effective solution-processed method and most importantly to uncover its intrinsic mechanism as well. Combined with the separation and selection technique like density gradient centrifugation or polyfluorene derivatives assisted method, highly monodisperse semiconducting nanotubes could be deposited into organized, controllable and functional arrays. Beyond the ambient conditions, precise control for the evaporation under preset temperature and vapor pressure could possibly extend the technique to the industry level. Assisted by some other mature techniques such as roll-to-roll printing, the cost-effective method could be widely used in the manufacture of various thin film devices. More complex 2D or even 3D structures could be designed and accomplished by the method for the functional or stretchable requirements. Further research on the fundamental exciton transition and diffusion in different networks or structures of SWNTs will be the significant precondition for the real applications. Looking ahead, from the individual carbon nanotube to its thin film, this promising material with outstanding properties had many challenges to overcome before the real-world applications. Thanks to the availability of pure and well-defined materials, the scalable solution-processed approaches for fabrication of thin films should be able to unlock the potential of carbon nanotubes and exploit them in (opto-)electronic devices in the foreseeing future.},
  subject      = {Kohlenstoff-Nanor{\"o}hre},
  language  = {en}
}