Study of a butane monolayer adsorbed on single-walled carbon nanotubes.

We present the results of a study of first-layer butane films adsorbed on single-walled carbon nanotubes. We measured 12 isotherms between 180 and 311 K. Butane molecules bind more strongly than shorter alkanes to the nanotubes. We measured a value of 391 meV for the low-coverage isosteric heat of butane. This value is 1.21 times larger than that for butane adsorbed on planar graphite and 1.27 times larger than the value for ethane on nanotubes at comparable coverages. We also compared the characteristics of the adsorption isotherms for butane with those we determined for ethane at the same relative temperatures. This comparison allowed us to infer that there is a change in the adsorption behavior of linear alkanes which occurs as a function of increasing carbon chain length. While ethane isotherms display two substeps in the first layer (corresponding to adsorption on different groups of adsorption sites), one of these steps is significantly smeared for butane isotherms, becoming essentially impossible to resolve above 220 K.