Tantalum-oxide catalysed chemical vapour deposition of single- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Tantalum-oxide thin films are shown to catalyse single- and multi-walled carbon nanotube growth by chemical vapour deposition. A low film thickness, the nature of the support material (best results with SiO2) and an atmospheric process gas pressure are of key importance for successful nanotube nucleation. Strong material interactions, such as silicide formation, inhibit nanotube growth. In situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicates that no catalyst reduction to Ta-metal or Ta-carbide occurs during our nanotube growth conditions and that the catalytically active phase is the Ta-oxide phase. Such a reduction-free oxide catalyst can be technologically advantageous. © 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Structural and optical properties of III-V nanowires and nanowire heterostructures grown by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition

We have investigated the structural and optical properties of III-V nanowires grown by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition. Binary GaAs, InAs and InP nanowires, and ternary InGaAs and AlGaAs nanowires, have been fabricated and characterised. A variety of axial and radial heterostructures have also been fabricated, including GaAs/AlGaAs core-multishell and GaAs/InGaAs superlattice nanowires. GaAs/AlGaAs core-shell nanowires exhibit strong photoluminescence as the AlGaAs shell passivates the GaAs nanowire surface reducing the surface nonradiative recombination. © 2007 IEEE.

Structural and optical properties of axial and radial heterostructure III-V nanowires grown by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition

We have investigated the structural properties and photoluminescence of novel axial and radial heterostructure III-V nanowires, fabricated by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition. Segments of InGaAs have been incorporated within GaAs nanowires, to create axial heterostructure nanowires which exhibit strong photoluminescence. Photoluminescence is observed from radial heterostructure nanowires (core-shell nanowires), consisting of GaAs cores with AlGaAs shells. Core-multishell nanowires, of GaAs cores clad in several alternating layers of thick AlGaAs barrier shells and thin GaAs quantum well shells, exhibit a blue-shifted photoluminescence peak arising from quantum confinement effects. © 2006 Crown Copyright.

Optimised two-temperature growth of GaAs nanowire s by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition

We report a two-temperature procedure for the growth of GaAs nanowires by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition. An initial high temperature step affords effective nucleation and promotes epitaxial growth of straight (111)B-oriented nanowires. Lower temperatures are employed subsequently, to minimise nanowire tapering during growth. © 2006 IEEE.

Intrinsic terahertz plasmon signatures in chemical vapour deposited graphene

Plasmonic resonance at terahertz (THz) frequencies can be achieved by gating graphene grown via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) to a high carrier concentration. THz time domain spectroscopy of such gated monolayer graphene shows resonance features around 1.6 THz, which appear as absorption peaks when the graphene is electrostatically p-doped and change to enhanced transmission when the graphene is n-doped. Superimposed on the Drude-like frequency response of graphene, these resonance features are related to the inherent poly-crystallinity of CVD graphene. An understanding of these features is necessary for the development of future THz optical elements based on CVD graphene. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposited carbon nanotubes for field emission applications

Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition is an extremely versatile technique for directly growing multiwalled carbon nanotubes onto various substrates. We will demonstrate the deposition of vertically aligned nanotube arrays, sparsely or densely populated nanotube forests, and precisely patterned arrays of nanotubes. The high-aspect ratio nanotubes (∼50 nm in diameter and 5 microns long) produced are metallic in nature and direct contact electrical measurements reveal that each nanotube has a current carrying capacity of 107-108 A/cm2, making them excellent candidates as field emission sources. We examined the field emission characteristics of dense nanotube forests as well as sparse nanotube forests and found that the sparse forests had significantly lower turn-on fields and higher emission currents. This is due to a reduction in the field enhancement of the nanotubes due to electric field shielding from adjacent nanotubes in the dense nanotube arrays. We thus fabricated a uniform array of single nanotubes to attempt to overcome these issues and will present the field emission characteristics of this.

Cold-gas chemical vapor deposition to identify the key precursor for rapidly growing vertically-aligned single-wall and few-wall carbon nanotubes from pyrolyzed ethanol

Vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes (VA-CNTs) were rapidly grown from ethanol and their chemistry has been studied using a "cold-gas" chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Ethanol vapor was preheated in a furnace, cooled down and then flowed over cobalt catalysts upon ribbon-shaped substrates at 800 °C, while keeping the gas unheated. CNTs were obtained from ethanol on a sub-micrometer scale without preheating, but on a millimeter scale with preheating at 1000 °C. Acetylene was predicted to be the direct precursor by gas chromatography and gas-phase kinetic simulation, and actually led to millimeter-tall VA-CNTs without preheating when fed with hydrogen and water. There was, however a difference in CNT structure, i.e. mainly few-wall tubes from pyrolyzed ethanol and mainly single-wall tubes for unheated acetylene, and the by-products from ethanol pyrolysis possibly caused this difference. The "cold-gas" CVD, in which the gas-phase and catalytic reactions are separately controlled, allowed us to further understand CNT growth. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.