Authors: Gerald Franky Malgas Christopher J Arendse Nonhlanhla P Cele Franscious R Cummings
Publish Date: 2007/11/15
Volume: 43, Issue: 3, Pages: 1020-1025
Abstract
We report on the growth of carbon nanotubes CNTs by thermal Chemical Vapor Deposition CVD and investigate the effects of nitrogen carrier gas flow rates and mixture ratios on the morphology of CNTs on a silicon substrate by vaporizing the camphor/ferrocene mixture at 750 °C in a nitrogen atmosphere Carbon layers obtained after each CVD growth run of 15 min are characterized by scanning electron microscopy SEM and Raman spectroscopy Growth of CNTs is found to occur on silicon substrates The SEM micrographs helped better understand the nanotube growth morphology while Raman Spectroscopy was used to detect the presence of nanotubes and also identify their nature vizely semiconducting or metallic singlewalled or multiwalled Raman Spectra was also useful to estimate the quality of the samples as a ratio of nanotube to nonnanotube content The length and diameters of the aligned CNTs were found to depend on the pyrolysis temperatures mixture ratio and the nitrogen carrier gas flow ratesThe authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research CSIR South Africa Project No HGERA2S The authors are very grateful to Ms Retha Rossouw of the National Metrology Laboratory for helping with the SEM analysis
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