Ion and Charge Transport in Nanostructured and Porous SWNT/Polymer-Hybrids for Sensors and Actuators

Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) can be seen as rolled-up sheets of graphene. They have fascinating optical properties, very high carrier mobilities and can be processed from solution. These characteristics make them highly interesting for novel (opto)electronic devices such as electrochemical transistors. Within this project, we want to understand and tune the interactions of electrolyte ions with charge carriers in SWNTs, i.e., how ions form electric double layers in the complex environments around polymer-wrapped nanotubes and influence carrier mobility and optical properties (e.g., absorption, emission, scattering). 

We explore the impact of the nanotube network structure (from sparse, aligned and dense films to truly three-dimensional) on the ionic and electronic transport in electrochemical transistors with a wide range of electrochemical methods and optical spectroscopy/microscopy. We further aim to modify and functionalize SWNT networks to create highly selective chemical sensors and actuators.