2Tuning the photophysical properties of soluble single-wall carbon nanotube derivatives by co-fun.pdf

C A R B O N 4 7 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 1 2 6 4 –1 2 6 9 . sc iencedi rec t .comava i lab le at wwwjournal homepage: www.elsevier .com/ locate /carbonTuning the photophysical properties of soluble single-wall carbon nanotube derivatives by co-functionalization with organic moleculesFabrizio Cordellaa, Marco De Nardib, Enzo Mennab,*, Ce?cile He?bertc, Maria Antonietta Loia,* aZernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands bITM-CNR and Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, Universita? di Padova, Via Marzolo 1, 35131 Padova, Italy cEPFL SB-CIME IPN-LSME, Ba?timent MXC, Station 12, CH-1015 Lausanne, SwitzerlandA R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 3 October 2008 Accepted 4 January 2009 Available online 8 January6223/$ - see front matter  2009 Elsevi doi:10.1016/j.carbon.2009.01.004 * Corresponding authors: Fax: +31 5036387 E-mail addresses: Enzo.Menna@unipd.it (A B S T R A C T The photophysical characterization of three soluble derivatives of single-wall carbon nano- tubes (SWCNTs), functionalized with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), co-functionalized with PEG and aminofluorene and co-functionalized with PEG and aminoanthracene is reported. The peculiar excellent solubility of these derivatives allows, for the first time in covalently functionalized SWCNTs, the study of their excitation dynamics by monitoring the near- infra-red emission. Moreover, the aminoanthracene derivative shows higher photolumi- nescence efficiency in the visible range than the aminofluorene derivative, demonstrating the possibility to tune extensively the photophysical properties of these functionalized SWCNTs.  2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.1. Introduction Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are very intriguing nano-scale objects that receive great interest in the scientific community for their outstanding mechanical, electronic and optical properties, mostly determined by their one-dimen- sional character [1,2]