The influence of treatment time on multi-walled carbon nanotubes functionalized by poly(ethylene glycol)

Thi Mai Hoa Le

Abstract

The paper reports an influence of treatment duration on the characteristics of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) functionalised by poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) for the first time. MWCNTs covalently functionalised with PEG (MWCNTs-PEG) are successfully prepared and characterised by several techniques including FE-SEM, EDX, Raman spectroscopy and TGA. The FE-SEM images show that an average tube diameter of the MWCNTs-PEG is increased by 21% in comparison to pristine MWCNTs. According to the TGA analysis and EDX measurements, the highest weight loss of 21.31 wt% and the highest ratio of oxygen to carbon (O/C) of 22.26 % are simultaneously achieved for the treatment time of 6 h. The results allow us to conclude that the optimum time to obtain the best functionalisation result is 6 h.