Effect of temperature on growth and structure of carbon nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition

The effect of temperature on growth and structure of carbon nanotubes (NTs) using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been investigated. Iron embedded silica was used to grow NTs in large quantity at various temperatures from 600 to 1050 °C with gas pressure fixed at 0.6 and 760 Torr, respectively. The growth and structure of the NTs are strongly affected by the temperature. At low gas pressure, the NTs are completely hollow at low temperature and bamboo-like structure at high temperature. While at high gas pressure, all the NTs are bamboo-like structure regardless of temperature. The diameter of NTs increases significantly with temperature. At low gas pressure the diameter gets bigger by mainly increasing the number of graphene layers of the wall of NTs, whereas at high gas pressure the diameter gets bigger by increasing both the number of graphene layers of the wall and the inner diameter of the NTs. This result indicates that the growth temperature is crucial in synthesizing NTs with different structures. The findings here are important for realizing controlled growth of NTs for their applications in different fields. Received: 20 November 2001 / Accepted: 21 November 2001 / Published online: 4 March 2002