IRIC – Institut de recherche en immunologie et en cancérologie de l’Université de Montréal

Covalent functionalization offers promising avenues to manipulate and add new functions to carbon nanotubes. However, monovalent grafts are known to alter the nanotube electronic properties. Here, divalent functionalization using different carbene reactions is shown to preserve the electrical conductance of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) for both metallic and semiconducting species. Devices functionalized with methylene or dichloromethylene groups show electrical characteristics identical to pristine SWNT devices, whereas monovalent 4-bromophenyl groups cause a current loss of more than an order of magnitude. Divalent functionalization can thus be used to derive functional SWNT-based electronic devices without compromising their electrical transport properties.