Unzipping of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has been widely explored to obtain new nanocarbon structures with promising properties. In this work, we report that unzipping of CNTs according to the well-established modified Hummers method produces unzipped CNTs (uCNTs) that exhibit self-photoluminescence that depends on the diameter of pristine CNTs. The uCNTs were characterized using FTIR spectroscopy, XRD, XPS, and Raman spectroscopy indicating that unzipping is accompanied by the introduction of defects and oxygen-containing functional groups. The morphology of CNTs and uCNTs was determined by TEM showing longitude unzipping of CNTs. Our study shows that increasing the diameter of pristine CNTs results in decreasing the edge etching effect and decreasing the functionality of uCNTs. Based on the UV-Vis spectra, the band gap of uCNTs was calculated using the Kubelka-Munk function. The band gap of uCNTs increased with decreasing diameter of pristine CNTs. The uCNTs exhibited photoluminescence with a good emission in the visible light region. The uCNTs with the largest band gap and the highest oxygen content had the strongest fluorescence intensity. Moreover, different metal ions produced different degrees of fluorescence quenching for uCNT-15, which verified the self-photoluminescence of uCNTs.
Keywords: band gap; oxygen-containing functional group; self-photoluminescence; unzipped carbon nanotubes.