| Abstract
| - We report the spontaneous liquid crystal phase separation of nanotubes (single-walled carbonnanotubes, SWNTs) stabilized in aqueous biological (hyaluronic acid, HA) solutions. Sonication of SWNTsin solutions of HA produced well-dispersed single-phase isotropic dispersions which, over time, phaseseparated into dispersions containing birefringent nematic domains in equilibrium with an isotropic phase.The time required for phase separation to occur was shown to depend on the concentration of SWNT andHA, with the attractive interactions between the SWNT and HA shifting the onset of the phase separationtoward lower concentration. This phase separation is accompanied by an increase in the dispersion viscositywith this increase qualitatively matching the degree of phase separation. The formation of ordered phasesin biological media can offer wide opportunities for processing conducting biomaterials with aligned andoriented domains.
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