Abstract
Understanding the fundamental mechanisms and limiting processes of the growth of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) would serve as a guide to achieve further control on structural parameters of SWCNT. In this paper, we have studied the growth kinetics of a series of SWCNT forests continuously spanning a wide range of diameters (1.9–3.2 nm), and have revealed an additional fundamental growth limiting process where the mass of the individual SWCNT is determined by the individual catalyst volume. Calculation of the conversion rate of carbon atoms into CNTs per Fe atom is 2 × 102 atoms per second. This rate limiting process provides an important understanding where the larger diameter SWCNT would grow faster, and thus be more suited for mass production.
Highlights
Even after 20 years since its discovery, controlling the synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) remains the central issue for CNT research
We have studied the growth kinetics of a series of single-walled CNT (SWCNT) forests spanning a wide range of the diameters (1.9–3.2 nm), and have revealed an additional fundamental growth limiting process where the mass of the individual SWCNT is determined by the individual catalyst volume
We synthesized a series of SWCNT forests with continuous and wide range of the diameter and density and studied the growth kinetics from which we found the fundamental growth limiting process
Summary
Even after 20 years since its discovery, controlling the synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) remains the central issue for CNT research. We interpret that the offsetting effects of Ostwald ripening and subsurface diffusion resulted in the growth of SWNT forests with similar average diameters [21]. Each of these proposed growth mechanisms and processes have contributed to constructing a general picture of CNT synthesis. We have studied the growth kinetics of a series of SWCNT forests spanning a wide range of the diameters (1.9–3.2 nm), and have revealed an additional fundamental growth limiting process where the mass of the individual SWCNT is determined by the individual catalyst volume
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