Abstract
One aspect of carbon nanotube (CNT) synthesis that remains an obstacle to realize industrial mass production is the growth efficiency. Many approaches have been reported to improve the efficiency, either by lengthening the catalyst lifetime or by increasing the growth rate. We investigated the applicability of dwell time and carbon flux control to optimize yield, growth rate, and catalyst lifetime of water-assisted chemical vapor deposition of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) forests using acetylene as a carbon feedstock. Our results show that although acetylene is a precursor to CNT synthesis and possesses a high reactivity, the SWCNT forest growth efficiency is highly sensitive to dwell time and carbon flux similar to ethylene. Through a systematic study spanning a wide range of dwell time and carbon flux levels, the relationship of the height, growth rate, and catalyst lifetime is found. Further, for the optimum conditions for 10 min growth, SWCNT forests with ~2500 μm height, ~350 μm/min initial growth rates and extended lifetimes could be achieved by increasing the dwell time to ~5 s, demonstrating the generality of dwell time control to highly reactive gases.
Highlights
One of the most significant obstacles in limiting the application of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) is the low growth efficiency
As a function of the dwell time and carbon flux, the SWCNT forests grown for 10 min from acetylene and ethylene were characterized by the forest height (Figure 1a,b)
We have experimentally demonstrated the generality of the dwell-time and carbon-flux control of the carbon feedstock (Fast-chemical vapor deposition (CVD)) for the acetylene-based SWCNT CVD
Summary
One of the most significant obstacles in limiting the application of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) is the low growth efficiency. The SWCNTs within these forests have shown to possess exceptional properties, such as high purity, alignment, high surface area, and long length [7,8,16,17,18]. These properties have afforded the development of CNT applications, exemplified by strain sensors, aerogel muscles, electro-catalysts for fuel cells, stretchable conductors, super-capacitors, microfluidic chips, electric motors and generators, heat exchangers as thermal/electrical conductive polymers (rubber), and metal and ceramic composites [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28]
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