Dispersion of carbon nanotubes by single-stranded DNA wrapping for advanced biomedical applications

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are novel materials with unique electrical, thermal, and structural proprieties, which make them attractive for applications in composites, medicine, biology, electronics, and energy management. There are more and more attempts to use CNT, especially single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT), in various biomedical applications, which require highly purified samples, with no contents of catalyst residual metal particles, good dispersion in an aqueous solution at relatively high concentrations. This report presents all these three main requirements as proved by Raman spectroscopy, UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy and thermogravimetrical analysis. The maximum achieved concentration of SWNTs dispersed in water when wrapped with single-stranded DNA (ss-DNA) was of 400 mg/l. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.