Advisor: J.W. Schneider Chemical
Engineering and M. Islam, MSE.
Carbon
nanotubes have unique mechanical and electronic
properties and are finding numerous applications
in nanotechnology. The synthesis of carbon
nanotubes yields a mixture of products with various
length, semiconducting properties, and chirality
and these products must be sorted for proper implementation
in nanoscale devices. Recently, it has been
observed that the attachment of short DNA strands
induces differences in nanotube surface charge
that can be mapped to differences in semiconduction
band gap. However, these charge shifts are
not substantial enough to provide separations with
sufficiently high resolution due to a weak binding
of unmodified DNA to nanotubes. This project
will focus on the attachment of DNA to nanotubes
by use of tightly binding nonpolar groups such
as n-alkanes and bile salts. The latter may
also provide differences in binding to nanotubes
of different chirality. Separations will
be performed in capillary electrophoresis using
flurorescently-labeled DNA as markers. |
