Graphene–CNT hybrids by thermal and plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition process: Numerical modeling of growth and energy kinetics

Abstract

AbstractThe numerical computations for the species density and energy kinetics are used to elaborate the growth mechanism and differences between the graphene–carbon nanotube (CNT) hybrids grown by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and plasma‐enhanced CVD (PECVD) process. The modeling results show that the CNT, graphene, and graphene–CNT hybrids have enhanced growth rates in a plasma medium than in a neutral gas environment of a CVD method. Plasma enables low‐temperature growth of graphene–CNT hybrids and offers a broad temperature range for the growth than the CVD technique that operates only at elevated temperatures. The underlying reasons and mechanisms behind the better growth rates and temperature range offered by the PECVD process (~400–1,600 K) are explained through the results.