Patent ID: 8592612

Claim:
A method of forming water-soluble carbon nanotubes (CNTs), comprising: providing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) functionalized with carboxylic acid (CNT-COOH); reacting the carboxylic acid functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNT-COOH) with a reactant to form an intermediate reaction product comprising one of: carbon nanotubes functionalized with COCl (CNT-COCl); and carbon nanotubes functionalized with a group of the form wherein R and R 1 are selected from phenyl, C 3 H 7 , C 3 H 6 N(CH 3 ) 2 , and C 2 H 5 ; reacting the intermediate product with a mono-terminated, protected-polyethylene glycol (PEG) oligomer to form a carbon nanotube functionalized with the mono-terminated, protected PEG oligomer (CNT-PEG-T).