Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be considered as a material which have exceptional properties, but due to nanoscale dimension of individual CNTs and fragile nature, interfacing CNTs with metal is critical for practical application of CNTs. But connecting CNTs into a metal surface with low interface resistance is challenging due to the low affinity of CNTs for metals, CNT side walls have sp<sup>2 </sup>hybridized C atoms which are chemically inert which prevents the strong bond formation with metals in mild reaction conditions. In this study different metal surfaces including Cu, Al, Stainless steel, Au and ITO were functionalized with a short organic linker group which can react with the CNTs to form metal-linker-CNT type robust bonding. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Infrared spectroscopy followed by ultrasonication used to identify the chemical nature and the robustness of the linker-metal bonding. CNT film was bonded on to the linker grafted metal surfaces to demonstrate the proposed bonding type, scanning electron microscopy images followed by ultrasonication shows the CNT film presence on the metal surface after forming metal-linker-CNT bond. CNT-metal hybrid material electrochemically characterized using cyclic voltammetry and CNT-metal hybrid material shows electrically conductive characteristics with improved capacitance compared to the pure metal for all metals after grafting CNTs on the metals. The robustness and electrically conductive nature of the metal-linker-CNT interface bonding demonstrated so this fabricated material gives opportunity to investigate superior properties of the CNT in various devices including electrochemical sensors and biodevices.

Chemically attachment of robust CNT film on the metal surfaces

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