Filling Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes with Lutetium Chloride : A Sustainable Production of Nanocapsules Free of Nonencapsulated Material

Filled carbon nanotubes are of interest for a wide variety of applications ranging from sensors to magnetoelectronic devices and going through the development of smart contrast and therapeutic agents in the biomedical field. In general, regardless of the method employed, bulk filling of carbon nanotubes results in the presence of a large amount of external nonencapsulated material. Therefore, further processing is needed to achieve a sample in which the selected payload is present only in the inner cavities of the nanotubes. Here, we report on a straightforward approach that allows the removal of nonencapsulated compounds in a time efficient and environmentally friendly manner, using water as a "green" solvent, while minimizing the residual waste. The results presented herein pave the way toward the production of large amounts of high-quality closed-ended filled nanotubes, also referred to as carbon nanocapsules, readily utilizable in the foreseen applications

Carbon nanotubes allow capture of krypton, barium and lead for multichannel biological X-ray fluorescence imaging

The desire to study biology in situ has been aided by many imaging techniques. Among these, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mapping permits observation of elemental distributions in a multichannel manner. However, XRF imaging is underused, in part, because of the difficulty in interpreting maps without an underlying cellular ‘blueprint’; this could be supplied using contrast agents. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be filled with a wide range of inorganic materials, and thus can be used as ‘contrast agents’ if biologically absent elements are encapsulated. Here we show that sealed single-walled CNTs filled with lead, barium and even krypton can be produced, and externally decorated with peptides to provide affinity for sub-cellular targets. The agents are able to highlight specific organelles in multiplexed XRF mapping, and are, in principle, a general and versatile tool for this, and other modes of biological imaging

The Role of Temperature on the Degree of End-Closing and Filling of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Carbon Nanostructures: Synthesis, Properties and ApplicationsCarbon nanotubes (CNTs), owing to their high surface area-to-volume ratio and hollow core, can be employed as hosts for adsorbed and/or encapsulated molecules. At high temperatures, the ends of CNTs close spontaneously, which is relevant for several applications, including catalysis, gas storage, and biomedical imaging and therapy. This study highlights the influence of the annealing temperature in the range between 400 and 1100 °C on the structure and morphology of single-walled CNTs. The nitrogen adsorption and density functional theory calculations indicate that the fraction of end-closed CNTs increases with temperature. Raman spectroscopy reveals that the thermal treatment does not alter the tubular structure. Insight is also provided into the efficacy of CNTs filling from the molten phase, depending on the annealing temperature. The CNTs are filled with europium (III) chloride and analyzed by using electron microscopy (scanning electron microscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, confirming the presence of filling and closed ends. The filling yield increases with temperature, as determined by thermogravimetric analysis. The obtained results show that the apparent surface area of CNTs, fraction of closed ends, and amount of encapsulated payload can be tailored via annealing.The research leading to these results has received funding from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain) through the grants ECIME (PID2020-113805GB-I00 and PID2020-115631GB-I00) and from FP7 ITN project RADDEL (290023). ICMAB and ICN2 acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (CEX2019-000917-S and SEV-2017-0706 respectively). The APC was funded by CSIC and PID2020-113805GB-I00. ICN2 is funded by the CERCA programme/Generalitat de Catalunya.Peer reviewe

Filling Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes with Lutetium Chloride : A Sustainable Production of Nanocapsules Free of Nonencapsulated Material

Filled carbon nanotubes are of interest for a wide variety of applications ranging from sensors to magnetoelectronic devices and going through the development of smart contrast and therapeutic agents in the biomedical field. In general, regardless of the method employed, bulk filling of carbon nanotubes results in the presence of a large amount of external nonencapsulated material. Therefore, further processing is needed to achieve a sample in which the selected payload is present only in the inner cavities of the nanotubes. Here, we report on a straightforward approach that allows the removal of nonencapsulated compounds in a time efficient and environmentally friendly manner, using water as a "green" solvent, while minimizing the residual waste. The results presented herein pave the way toward the production of large amounts of high-quality closed-ended filled nanotubes, also referred to as carbon nanocapsules, readily utilizable in the foreseen applications