Fluorescent Ultrashort Nanotubes from Defect-Induced Chemical Cutting

Abstract

Ultrashort single-walled carbon nanotubes that fluoresce brightly in the shortwave infrared are potential candidates in bio-imaging and bio-sensing. However, the great potential has been largely underexplored for decades due to inherent challenges in synthesizing this material. In this work, we have successfully addressed this synthetic challenge by implanting chemical defects along the lengths of nanotubes and subsequently cutting the structure using H2O2. This simple two-step process leads to the synthesis of fluorescent ultrashort nanotubes with a narrow length distribution and a yield as high as 53%. This work sheds new insights on the role of defects in carbon nanochemistry and makes fluorescent ultrashort nanotubes highly accessible, which may enable many basic and applied studies of nanotubes in bioimaging, sensing, photophysics, carbon nanochemistry, and quantum technologies.