Preferential growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes on silica spheres by chemical vapor deposition

The preferential growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on silica spheres with various diameters was realized for the first time by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of methane. SWNTs tend to wrap the silica spheres to form a new superstructure of uniform SWNT nanoclaws when the diameters of the silica spheres are larger than 400 nm. The SWNTs obtained on silica spheres have highly graphitic tubular walls as characterized by Raman spectroscopy and HRTEM. This is a new method to obtain tunable uniform elastic deformation of SWNTs, which may act as the model for the study about the effect of delocalized bending on the properties of SWNTs. In addition, the combination of SWNTs with monodispersed silica spheres could conveniently integrate SWNTs into photonic crystals.