Carbon nanotube diameter tuning using hydrogen amount and temperature on SiO2/Si substrates

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were grown on thin iron (Fe) films on SiO 2/Si substrates by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at four different hydrogen (H2)/methane (CH4) ratios at temperatures ranging from 925 to 1000°C. The effects of temperature and the amount of hydrogen gas on the mean diameter at increasing temperature were examined. We demonstrated that the mean diameter and its distribution depend not only on temperature but also on the H2 amount. We showed that increasing H2 amount strongly affects the structure of CNTs, especially at high growth temperature; the mean diameter at 1000°C reduced from about 383 to 34 nm by increasing H2 amount from 24 to 50 sccm. We observed that at high temperature growth the mean diameter was decreasing very fast initially with increasing H2 amount suggesting the dominance of H2 over the growth temperature. A decrease in the slope of diameter vs. H 2 amount with further increment in H2 amount implied that the temperature was, then, deciding the CNT diameter through catalyst particle coarsening. The statistical analysis presented implies that the H2 amount has to be adjusted according to the growth temperature for given CH 4 amount to keep CNT diameter under control, and the large diameter distributions at high temperature and high H2 amount can be associated with the large variation in the catalyst particle sizes. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.