Liquid-Crystal Phase Optimization Using the Alignment Relay Technique for the Deposition of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

The alignment and sorting of carbon nanotubes constitutes a challenging and industrially significant field of research. We have recently created a technique to simultaneously align and sort single-walled carbon nanotubes on a surface through the use of a specially designed organic thin film. This alignment relay technique can be intelligently altered to judiciously target key parameters of nanotube deposition including density, alignment, and length. Here, we demonstrate that by simply altering the nature of the liquid crystal used the average length of the nanotubes can be decreased by half while increasing the density 3-fold, with minimal impact on the diameter sorting.