Investigation of growth dynamics of carbon nanotubes

The synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with defined properties is required for both fundamental investigations and practical applications. The revealing and thorough understanding of the growth mechanism of SWCNTs is the key to the synthesis of nanotubes with required properties. This paper reviews the current status of the research on the investigation of growth dynamics of carbon nanotubes. The review starts with the consideration of the peculiarities of the growth mechanism of carbon nanotubes. The physical and chemical states of the catalyst during the nanotube growth are discussed. The chirality selective growth of nanotubes is described. The main part of the review is dedicated to the analysis and systematization of the reported results on the investigation of growth dynamics of nanotubes. The studies on the revealing of the dependence of the growth rate of nanotubes on the synthesis parameters are reviewed. The correlation between the lifetime of catalyst and growth rate of nanotubes is discussed. The reports on the calculation of the activation energy of the nanotube growth are summarized. Finally, the growth properties of inner tubes inside SWCNTs are considered.© 2017 Kharlamov

Raman Spectroscopy Study of the Doping Effect of the Encapsulated Iron, Cobalt, and Nickel Bromides on Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

In this contribution the modification of the electronic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) filled with nickel bromide, cobalt bromide, and iron bromide was studied by Raman spectroscopy. The doping-induced alterations of the radial breathing mode (RBM) and G-mode in the Raman spectra of the filled SWCNTs were analyzed in detail. The observed shifts of the components of the Raman modes and changes of their profiles allowed concluding that the embedded compounds have an acceptor doping effect on the SWCNTs, and the doping level increases in the line with nickel bromide-cobalt bromide-iron bromide

Chirality-dependent growth of single-wall carbon nanotubes as revealed inside nano-test tubes

Growth dynamics of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have been studied with nickelocene as a precursor encapsulated in the interior of template SWCNTs. By means of multi-laser Raman spectroscopy, growth curves of nine different SWCNTs, (8,8), (12,3), (13,1), (9,6), (10,4), (11,2), (11,1), (9,3) and (9,2), have been determined upon in situ annealing at various temperatures. The data reveal that the nanotubes grow through fast and slow reaction pathways with high and low activation energies, respectively. While the activation energy of the slow growth is independent of the nanotube's chiral vector, that of the fast growth exhibits a monotonic increase as the tube diameter reduces from ∼1.1 down to 0.8 nm and no dependency on the chiral angle, which can be attributed to the size-dependent properties of catalyst clusters. The chirality dependent catalytic growth properties exploited in this study provide the basis for a large-scale synthesis of single-chiral vector SWCNTs