Production of empty and iron-filled multiwalled carbon nanotubes from iron–phthalocyanine polymer and their electromagnetic properties

Abstract

A facile production of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MCNTs) using iron-phthalocyanine polymer as the only carbon source with two kinds of metallic catalysts (Fe(CO)5 and nano-iron) has been compared here. SEM, TEM and XRD were employed to figure the detailed structures of the carbon nanotubes. Consequently, catalyst played a key role in the formation of MCNTs: nano-iron resulted in iron-filled CNTs while Fe(CO)5 led to empty CNTs. Both of these two CNTs were long and straight, with ~100 nm in diameter and several tens of micrometers in length. Moreover, dielectric and magnetic properties were carried to further study synthesized carbon nanotubes. The results showed that the empty MCNTs had better dielectric properties than iron-filled MCNTs although the iron-filled CNTs exhibited the magnetic saturation of ~3.5 emu/g and coercive force of ~594.0 Oe, which is much higher than empty MCNTs.