Synthesis of High-Quality Carbon Nanotube Arrays without the Assistance of Water

Yongfeng Luo,Xi Li,Xinjun Wang,Mengdong He,Hong Chen

doi:10.1155/2012/542582

Abstract

Long and high-quality carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays have been synthesized through a chemical vapor deposition process. The Fe/Al2O3on silicon was used as the catalyst, ethylene as the carbon source, and a gas mixture of Ar and H2gases as the carrying gas. It is found for the first time that the high-quality and superlong carbon nanotube array can be improved by varying the content of hydrogen and carbon source.

Highlights

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been extensively studied recently due to their unique structures and excellent mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
Long and high-quality carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays have been synthesized through a chemical vapor deposition process
We report the successful synthesis of 4 mm-long aligned CNTs by improving the flow ratio of hydrogen in the catalytic thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique without waterassistance

Summary

Introduction

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been extensively studied recently due to their unique structures and excellent mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. The alignment, diameter, and number of walls of a CNT significantly affect its mechanical and electrical properties and can impact a wide range of applications such as probe microscopy tips [17, 18], field emission devices [19], solar cells [7, 20], electromechanical devices [21], and structural composites [22, 23]. The developments of synthesis techniques that can control the length, diameter, alignment, and number of walls of the nanotubes have become the most important part of intense research. We report the successful synthesis of 4 mm-long aligned CNTs by improving the flow ratio of hydrogen in the catalytic thermal CVD technique without waterassistance

Experimental

Results and Discussion

Conclusions