US Patent 7959779 - Manipulating SWCNTs

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7959779.html

This patent is based on research from Richard Smalley's group at Rice University and has priority from 1996. The claims appear to be basic to sorting mixtures of single walled nanotubes by length, diameter, or chirality which determine semiconductor or metallic characteristics. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method comprising:

a) providing a mixture of single-wall carbon nanotubes;

b) cutting the single-wall carbon nanotubes;

c) dispersing the single-wall carbon nanotubes; and

d) fractionating the mixture by a characteristic selected from the group consisting of lengths, diameters, helicities and combinations thereof.