Unbundled and highly functionalized carbon nanotubes from aqueous reactions

In this communication, we show that aryldiazonium salts can react efficiently with individual SDS-coated SWNTs in water to form aryl functionalized SWNTs. Remarkably, the resulting SWNTs have up to 1 in 9 carbons along their backbones bearing an organic moiety and they remain unbundled throughout their entire lengths, even with these relatively small functional moieties.