SYNTHESIS, TOXICITY AND APPLICATIONS OF DOPED CARBON NANOTUBES

By doping carbon nanotubes it is possible to alter significantly the electronic, mechanical and chemical properties of the tubes. This possibility opens up new avenues in the production of nanomaterials with desired properties using different dopants. Therefore, the controlled production of N-doped carbon nanotubes will be discussed. The field emission properties of doped tubes, their use as gas sensors or protein immobilizers will also be discussed. It will be also demonstrated that Ag and Au particles could be easily anchored on the surface of N-doped nanotubes. Possible mechanisms will be discussed. We will present the first results related to the fabrication of CNx nanotube–polystyrene (PS) composites, which were produced by a novel polymerization technique using a “grafting from ” route using Nitroxide Mediated Radical Polymerization (NMRP) and atomic transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). We demonstrate using HRTEM and EELS that the tube material was covalently bonded to the PS chains, thus forming brush-like structures. These polymerized CNx nanotubes form uniform dispersions in organic solvents. The results are novel and constitute will results in further developments related to the chemistry of CNx nanotubes and fabrication of novel polymer composites.Finally, the bio-applications of CNx nanotubes will be discussed in detail. In particular, comparative toxicological studies of CNx MWNTs and pure carbon multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs) on mice reveal that CNx tubes appear to be far less harmful. Fo