Precise control over physical characteristics of Carbon Nanotubes by differential variation of Argon flow rate during Chemical Vapor Deposition processing: A systematic study on growth kinetics

Abstract In this paper, we report a systematic work on growth analysis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using thermal CVD method where fine tuning of CNTs׳ physical characteristics, i.e. length(height of carpet), diameter, number of walls and orientation have been greatly achieved by simply varying the Argon(Ar) gas flow rate in the Ar and Acetylene gas mixture. Ar flow rate was varied from 0 to 100 sccm with 20 sccm interval and the growth evolution was monitored by FESEM, HRTEM, and Raman spectrometer. A gradual change was observed in the reduction of diameter, increase in height, decrease in defect density, and change in orientation from horizontal to vertical of the CNTs grown over the prescribed flow rate range. Growth mechanism is discussed at every step of Ar flow rate in consideration of the analysis done on the image from electron microscopes and Raman spectra.

[1]  Di Zhang,et al.  The growth of carbon nanotubes in aluminum powders by the catalytic pyrolysis of polyethylene glycol , 2012 .

[2]  R. K. Tripathi,et al.  Structural, Nanomechanical, and Field Emission Properties of Amorphous Carbon Films Having Embedded Nanocrystallites Deposited by Filtered Anodic Jet Carbon Arc Technique , 2013 .

[3]  Aleksandr V. Eletskii.  Carbon nanotube-based electron field emitters , 2010 .

[4]  S. Iijima.  Helical microtubules of graphitic carbon , 1991, Nature.

[5]  Effect of nitrogen and hydrogen on the growth of multiwall carbon nanotubes on flexible carbon cloth using thermal chemical vapor deposition , 2012 .

[6]  J. Rogers,et al.  High-performance electronics using dense, perfectly aligned arrays of single-walled carbon nanotubes. , 2007, Nature nanotechnology.

[7]  Z. Ren,et al.  Effect of temperature, pressure, and gas ratio of methane to hydrogen on the synthesis of double-walled carbon nanotubes by chemical vapour deposition , 2005 .

[8]  Chuan Yi Tang,et al.  A 2.|E|-Bit Distributed Algorithm for the Directed Euler Trail Problem , 1993, Inf. Process. Lett..

[9]  R. Stevens.  New carbon nanotube AFM probe technology , 2009 .

[10]  Wenzhi Li,et al.  Effect of temperature on growth and structure of carbon nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition , 2002 .

[11]  M. P. Kulakov,et al.  GROWTH OF CARBON NANOTUBES (CNTs) IN ELECTRIC-ARC DISCHARGE IN ARGON , 2002 .

[12]  Hyung-Gi Byun,et al.  Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles from the 8th Asian Conference on Chemical Sensors (ACCS 2009) , 2011 .

[13]  Robert P. H. Chang,et al.  A nanotube-based field-emission flat panel display , 1998 .

[14]  K. Banerjee,et al.  Low-Resistivity Long-Length Horizontal Carbon Nanotube Bundles for Interconnect Applications—Part I: Process Development , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[15]  Harsh,et al.  Transfer of microstructure pattern of CNTs onto flexible substrate using hot press technique for sensing applications , 2013 .

[16]  Wenzhi Li,et al.  Synthesis and field emission properties of vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays on copper , 2012 .

[17]  S. Kishimoto,et al.  Medium Scale Integrated Circuits Using Carbon Nanotube Thin Film Transistors , 2010 .

[18]  Niraj Sinha,et al.  Carbon nanotube-based sensors. , 2006, Journal of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

[19]  D. Bethune,et al.  Storage of hydrogen in single-walled carbon nanotubes , 1997, Nature.

[20]  S. A. Moiz,et al.  Humidity Sensing Properties of Carbon Nano-Tube Thin Films , 2011 .

[21]  J. Marulanda.  Carbon Nanotubes Applications on Electron Devices , 2011 .

[22]  Liming Dai,et al.  Functionalized surfaces based on polymers and carbon nanotubes for some biomedical and optoelectronic applications , 2003 .

[23]  Nishant Tripathi,et al.  Catalyst free, excellent quality and narrow diameter of CNT growth on Al2O3 by a thermal CVD technique , 2014 .

[24]  Liwei Lin,et al.  Flexible energy storage devices based on carbon nanotube forests with built-in metal electrodes , 2013 .

[25]  Pavel Nikolaev,et al.  Growth mechanisms for single-wall carbon nanotubes in a laser-ablation process , 2001 .

[26]  Huisheng Peng,et al.  Super-stretchy lithium-ion battery based on carbon nanotube fiber , 2014 .

[27]  J. M. Kim,et al.  Transparent conductive film based on carbon nanotubes and PEDOT composites , 2005 .

[28]  E. A. Mason,et al.  Graham's Laws of diffusion and effusion , 1967 .

[29]  Peter Burke,et al.  Carbon nanotube radio. , 2007, Nano letters.

[30]  M. Rusop,et al.  Effect of Synthesis Temperature on the Growth Iron-Filled Carbon Nanotubes as Evidenced by Structural, Micro-Raman, and Thermogravimetric Analyses , 2012 .

[31]  Michael S Strano,et al.  Carbon nanotubes as optical biomedical sensors. , 2013, Advanced drug delivery reviews.

[32]  Mukul Kumar,et al.  Chemical vapor deposition of carbon nanotubes: a review on growth mechanism and mass production. , 2010, Journal of nanoscience and nanotechnology.