The Effect of Ni and Co Catalysts on the Synthesis of Carbon Nanotubes on Silicon Substrate

Abstract

The effects of Ni and Co catalysts are investigated on growth of aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by thermal chemical vapor deposition (TCVD) method. It is found that the nickel catalyst has an important and strong role on the CNTs density, morphology and smaller diameter CNTs, whereas larger diameter CNTs are obtained by using cobalt catalyst lower densities. The carbon nanotubes catalyzed by Ni have the best alignment and the smoothest rather than Co catalyst in this research. The conditions were the same for synthesis of CNTs with both catalysts in this our research, but the structures were different because of the presence of different catalysts in the desired experiment. Therefore, Ni is considered the best catalyst for growth of aligned carbon nanotubes.

Keywords:

• TCVD
• catalyst
• carbon nanotube
• Raman spectroscopy
• SEM