Adsorption of Polar and Nonpolar Organic Chemicals to Carbon Nanotubes

Understanding adsorptive interactions between organic contaminants and carbon nanotubes is critical to both the environmental application of carbon nanotubes as special adsorbents and the assessment of the potential impact of carbon nanotubes on the fate and transport of organic contaminants in the environment. The adsorption of organic compounds with varied physical-chemical properties (hydrophobicity, polarity, electron polarizability, and size) to one single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) and two multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) was evaluated. For a given carbon nanotube, the adsorption affinity correlated poorly with hydrophobicity but increased in the order of nonpolar aliphatic