Finding a needle in a chemical haystack: tip-enhanced Raman scattering for studying carbon nanotubes mixtures

Tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) has emerged as a powerful analytical tool for measuring chemical images with nanometre spatial resolution. In this paper, the application of TERS to study differentiation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with 14 nm spatial resolution is demonstrated by the measurement of a mixture of two different types of SWCNTs as the model sample. The results demonstrate that TERS is a viable tool for the detection and localization of different SWCNTs and amorphous carbon in mixed SWCNTs based on the spectral differences in the radial breathing mode and the D bands.