Effect of Conformation in Main-Chain with Pyrene-Based Conjugated Polymers for Selective Dispersion of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube on Thermoelectronics

Abstract

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) has been regarded as one of the nanomaterials for future electronic devices because of their outstanding mechanical and electrical properties. For these reasons, researches for implementation of their electronic applications such as field-effect transistors and thermoelectric devices have been substantially promoted. Therefore, various techniques to isolate the electronically-pure SWNTs have been developed for the utilization in electronic devices. In particular, conjugated polymer wrapping of SWNT has specially aroused great attraction as a method for isolation of SWNTs due to their advantages of high selectivity toward semiconducting (sc-) SWNT and simple polymer sorting process. Various wrapping polymers such as polyflourene and polythiophene derivatives have been studied for the selective dispersion of sc-SWNT, but the selection rule between the main chain of polymer and specific sc-SWNT still remain question. In this research, we introduce the pyrene moiety to control the conformation over the mainchain on polymer. New pyrene-based conjugated polymers were carefully designed and synthesized via suzuki polymerization. Their dispersion selectivity and diameter of sc-SWNTs enriched by pyrene-based conjugated polymers were characterized by various measurements such as UV-vis absorption spectra, Raman spectroscopy and Photoluminescence analysis.