High-temperature adsorption of nitrogen dioxide for stable, efficient, and scalable doping of carbon nanotubes

This work is devoted to a novel efficient strategy for single-walled carbon nanotube doping employing heat treatment with nitrogen dioxide. Unlike numerous reports of unstable NO2 doping at room temperature, our method combines high efficiency and stability, enabled by temperature-dependent adsorption of nitrogen dioxide on the nanotube surface. We reveal that doping stability increases with the treatment temperature reaching maxima at 300 °C avoiding any detrimental effect on nanotube structure and optical transmittance. As a result, we demonstrate doped carbon nanotube transparent conductive films exhibiting competitive performance (compared to films treated with other dopants) with a less than 50% drop in conductive characteristics for over a year. Thermo-programmed desorption analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirm the preferential formation of long-living adsorbed nitrogen species, such as NO3-groups, as a result of high-temperature treatment. We believe the current work provides a basis for the robust and technologically efficient doping of single-walled carbon nanotubes and related structures at industrial scales, as the developed method could be easily coupled with a continuous technology of carbon nanotubes and their related materials production.