Towards chirality-pure carbon nanotubes

Current as-grown single-walled carbon nanotubes vary in diameter and chirality, which results in variations in their electronic and optical properties. Two approaches have been intensively studied to obtain chirality-pure nanotube structures and thus uniform properties for advanced applications. The first approach involves the post-synthesis separation according to the nanotubes' chiral vectors (n, m), and the second one involves direct synthes of carbon nanotubes with the same (n, m). This paper reviews the efforts along these two directions, with emphasis on the most recent progress of post-synthesis separation and the perspectives of controllable synthesis.