The study of the attachment of a single-walled carbon nanotube to a self-assembled monolayer using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

A chemical approach was put forward to organize the randomly tangled single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) on a gold surface. The SWCNTs were highly organized on gold, forming a monolayer structure. Angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (ARXPS) was employed to study the spatial structure of the monolayer of SWCNTs. The adsorption kinetics of the nanotubes was studied by measuring the thickness of the samples prepared at different immersion times. It was found that a SWCNTs monolayer could not form for a short period of immersion time. When prepared for a long enough period of time, the well-ordered monolayer of SWCNTs could form and remain stable.