Templating colloidal sieves for tuning nanotube surface interactions and optical sensor responses

Surfactants offer a tunable approach for modulating the exposed surface area of a nanoparticle. They further present a scalable and cost-effective means for suspending single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which have demonstrated practical use as fluorescence sensors. Though surfactant suspensions show record quantum yields for SWCNTs in aqueous solutions, they lack the selectivity that is vital for optical sensing. We present a new method...