Fig. 1
Characterization of MW-CNT-50 and MW-CNT-1000. a, b show dispersion stability of MW-CNT-50 (a) and MW-CNT-1000 (b) measured in water by Turbiscane Lab: Size distribution curves for MW-CNT-50 and MW-CNT-1000 and a photo of their aqueous solutions (5 × 10−3 mg/mL) homogeneously dispersed in water are shown as insets. c, d show characterizations of p-CNTs, MW-CNT-50, and MW-CNT-1000 by FT-IR (c) and TGA (d). e, h show SEM images of the surface morphology of coverslips uniformly coated with MW-CNTs; MW-CNT-50 (e, f) and MW-CNT-1000 (g, h); this SEM images with lower MW-CNT concentration in e, f were intentionally selected to prove that MW-CNT-50 molecules immobilized on the coverslip have an average length of 50 nm. The full scale SEM images of high magnification for MW-CNT-50 and MW-CNT-1000 samples were provided in Additional file 1: Figure S3 of the supplementary materials to show the similarity of the overall MW-CNT concentration for both samples