Single-walled carbon nanotubes grown from yttrium carbide particles

Abstract

The discovery of single-walled carbon nanotubes in the soot from the catalytic arc-discharge evaporation has enlarged the technological promises of this novel form of carbon. To produce single-walled tubes by the catalytic arc-discharge, Fe, Co, and Ni as well as a mixture of Ni and Fe have been used as the catalysts. The growth of single-walled nanotubes appears to depend on the presence of those catalysts in the gas phase of the discharge, but there is no visible evidence to relate the single-walled tubes to the catalytic particles. Recently, it has been reported that bundles of single-walled nanotubes, produced with Gd or Nd as the catalyst for the discharge, radiate from amorphous catalyst cores. We report here on the discovery of clusters of single-walled carbon nanotubes from the arc-discharge experiments with YC2 as the catalyst arranged around nuclei of yttrium carbides in a radiolarian pattern. They are present in large quantities in the primary soot.