Electrochemical properties of double wall carbon nanotube electrodes

Martin Pumera

doi:10.1007/s11671-006-9035-3

Abstract

Electrochemical properties of double wall carbon nanotubes (DWNT) were assessed and compared to their single wall (SWNT) counterparts. The double and single wall carbon nanotube materials were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy and electrochemistry. The electrochemical behavior of DWNT film electrodes was characterized by using cyclic voltammetry of ferricyanide and NADH. It is shown that while both DWNT and SWNT were significantly functionalized with oxygen containing groups, double wall carbon nanotube film electrodes show a fast electron transfer and substantial decrease of overpotential of NADH when compared to the same way treated single wall carbon nanotubes.

Highlights

Since the discovery of multi wall carbon nanotubes (MWNT) in 1991 by Iijima [1] and their single wall (SWNT) counterparts two years later [2], these nanoscale materials have attracted a vast interest because of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.In this paper, I describe and characterize double wall carbon nanotube electrodes and assess their potential for electrochemical sensing
Double wall carbon nanotubes and their single wall counterparts were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and cyclic voltammetry
TEM was used as another method to confirm the presence of double wall carbon nanotubes (DWNT) and SWNT in the corresponding films

Summary

Introduction

I describe and characterize double wall carbon nanotube electrodes and assess their potential for electrochemical sensing. I will describe that such DWNT electrodes have favorable electrochemical properties when compared to their SWNT counterparts which can lead to low-potential detection systems. All voltammetric experiments were performed using an electrochemical analyzer lAutolabIII (Ecochemie, Utrecht, The Netherlands) connected to a personal computer and controlled by General Purpose Electrochemical Systems v. All electrochemical potential in this paper are stated vs Ag/AgCl if not declared otherwise. Scanning electron microscope (SEM), field emission type, (Hitachi S-4800, Tokyo, Japan) was used to study the morphology of DWNT and SWNT films. JEM 2100F field emission transmission electron microscope (JOEL, Tokyo, Japan) working at 200 kV was used to acquire TEM figures in a scanning TEM mode (S/TEM; spot size, 0.7 nm; acceleration voltage, 200 kV). Raman spectra were collected using the 514.5 nm excitation from Ar ion laser beam in the backscattering geometry (BeamLok 2060-RS/T64000, Spectro-Physics, Mountain View, CA/Jobin Yvon, Horiba, France)

Methods

Results

Conclusion