Study of growth of silver nano catalyst for carbon nano tube growth

Abstract

Abstract Silver (Ag) nanocatalyst has been deposited on SiO2 glass substrate by the thermal evaporation method. The layer thickness was about 2.42 mm. The Ag nanocatalyst was then annealed at a temperature of 400 °C with the variation of annealing time for 1, 2, 3, and 4 h. Several spectroscopy methods were carried out to characterize the samples. From the scanning electron microscope (SEM) images showed that the diameter size of the nanoparticles were mostly 0.252 μ m, 0.236 μ m, 0.193 μ m, and 0.108 μ m, respectively. Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy revealed that composition of Ag for each sample are 0.26%, 0.14%, 0.48% and 0.04% respectively. Based on the SEM, the smallest diameter of particles was obtained after annealing for 4 h, and EDX results, the most Ag composition was obtained after annealing for 3 h. The results from Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy do not indicate the presence of Si O Ag bonds at SiO2/Ag, where based on literature, their peaks are at 827 cm−1 and 1749 cm−1.