Growth of Carbon Nanotubes on Surfaces: The Effects of Catalyst and Substrate

We report a study of synthesising air-stable, nearly monodispersed bimetallic colloids of Co/Pd and Fe/Mo of varying compositions as active catalysts for the growth of carbon nanotubes. Using these catalysts we have investigated the effects of catalyst and substrate on the carbon nanostructures formed in a plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) process. We will show how it is possible to assess the influence of both the catalyst and the support on the controlled growth of carbon nanotube and nanofiber arrays. The importance of the composition of the catalytic nuclei will be put into perspective with other results from the literature. Furthermore, the influence of other synthetic parameters such as the nature of the nanoparticle catalysts will also be analysed and discussed in detail.

ABM would like to thank the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) and PLAN E funds (Projects CTQ2009-10813/PPQ, RyC-2009-03813), as well as the PROMETEO project from the Generalitat Valenciana and the FEDER program (Prometeo/2009/047) for the financial support for this work.