Growth of half-meter long carbon nanotubes based on Schulz-Flory distribution.

The Schulz-Flory distribution is a mathematical function that describes the relative ratios of polymers of different length after a polymerization process, based on their relative probabilities of occurrence. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are big carbon molecules which have a very high length-to-diameter ratio, somewhat similar to polymer molecules. Large amounts of ultralong CNTs have not been obtained although they are highly desired. Here, we report that the Schulz-Flory distribution can be applied to describe the relative ratios of CNTs of different lengths produced with a floating chemical vapor deposition process, based on catalyst activity/deactivation probability. With the optimized processing parameters, we successfully synthesized 550-mm-long CNTs, for which the catalyst deactivation probability of a single growth step was ultralow. Our finding bridges the Schulz-Flory distribution and the synthesis of one-dimensional nanomaterials for the first time, and sheds new light on the rational design of process toward controlled production of nanotubes/nanowires.

[1]  G. Giambastiani,et al.  Simultaneous Polymerization and Schulz−Flory Oligomerization of Ethylene Made Possible by Activation with MAO of a C1-Symmetric [2,6-Bis(arylimino)pyridyl]iron Dichloride Precursor , 2004 .

[2]  Qing Zhang,et al.  Kinetics Studies of Ultralong Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes , 2009 .

[3]  Zhong Jin,et al.  Ultralow feeding gas flow guiding growth of large-scale horizontally aligned single-walled carbon nanotube arrays. , 2007, Nano letters.

[4]  S. Gupta,et al.  Vapor grown carbon fibers: Modeling of filament length distributions , 1994 .

[5]  Kwang S. Kim,et al.  Quasi-continuous growth of ultralong carbon nanotube arrays. , 2005, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[6]  A. Reina,et al.  Growth Mechanism of Long and Horizontally Aligned Carbon Nanotubes by Chemical Vapor Deposition , 2007 .

[7]  Jie Liu,et al.  Lattice-Oriented Growth of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes , 2000 .

[8]  F. Wei,et al.  Growing 20 cm Long DWNTs/TWNTs at a Rapid Growth Rate of 80−90 μm/s , 2010 .

[9]  L. Segev,et al.  Atomic-step-templated formation of single wall carbon nanotube patterns. , 2004, Angewandte Chemie.

[10]  Paul J. Flory,et al.  Molecular Size Distribution in Linear Condensation Polymers1 , 1936 .

[11]  C. Journet,et al.  Growing a carbon nanotube atom by atom: "and yet it does turn". , 2009, Nano letters.

[12]  S. Gupta,et al.  Vapor grown carbon fibers from pyrolysis of hydrocarbons: Modeling of filament growth and poisoning , 1993 .

[13]  FLORY,et al.  Molecular Size Distribution in Linear Condensation Polymers ’ , 2022 .

[14]  Effect of the Reynolds and Richardson Numbers on the Growth of Well-Aligned Ultralong Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes , 2010 .

[15]  Huaping Liu,et al.  The controlled growth of horizontally aligned single-walled carbon nanotube arrays by a gas flow process , 2009, Nanotechnology.

[16]  Jie Liu,et al.  Selective growth of well-aligned semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes. , 2009, Nano letters.

[17]  Q. X. Jia,et al.  Ultralong single-wall carbon nanotubes , 2004, Nature materials.

[18]  Jie Liu,et al.  How Catalysts Affect the Growth of Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes on Substrates , 2010, Advanced materials.

[19]  Stephen A. Morin,et al.  Mechanism and Kinetics of Spontaneous Nanotube Growth Driven by Screw Dislocations , 2010, Science.

[20]  B. C. Edwards,et al.  DESIGN AND DEPLOYMENT OF A SPACE ELEVATOR , 2000 .

[21]  R. Ruoff,et al.  Strength and breaking mechanism of multiwalled carbon nanotubes under tensile load , 2000, Science.

[22]  A. Harutyunyan,et al.  Dislocation theory of chirality-controlled nanotube growth , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[23]  Jiaqi Huang,et al.  100 mm Long, Semiconducting Triple‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes , 2010, Advanced materials.

[24]  P. Wasserscheid,et al.  Ethylene Trimerization with Mixed-Donor Ligand (N,P,S) Chromium Complexes: Effect of Ligand Structure on Activity and Selectivity , 2005 .

[25]  Qiang Zhang,et al.  Superstrong Ultralong Carbon Nanotubes for Mechanical Energy Storage , 2011, Advanced materials.

[26]  Rongli Cui,et al.  Flexible orientation control of ultralong single-walled carbon nanotubes by gas flow , 2009, Nanotechnology.

[27]  Mark A. Locascio,et al.  Measurements of near-ultimate strength for multiwalled carbon nanotubes and irradiation-induced crosslinking improvements. , 2008, Nature nanotechnology.

[28]  R. Smalley,et al.  Growth Mechanism of Oriented Long Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes Using "Fast-Heating" Chemical Vapor Deposition Process , 2004 .

[29]  P. Flory.  Principles of polymer chemistry , 1953 .

[30]  J. Xie,et al.  Fabrication of ultralong and electrically uniform single-walled carbon nanotubes on clean substrates. , 2009, Nano letters.

[31]  C. Kiang,et al.  Helicity Distributions of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes and Its Implication on the Growth Mechanism , 2010, Materials.

[32]  Ran Liu,et al.  Temperature-mediated growth of single-walled carbon-nanotube intramolecular junctions. , 2007, Nature materials.