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.

Chemical vapor deposition of nanocrystalline graphene directly on arbitrary high-temperature insulating substrates

Large area uniform nanocrystalline graphene is grown by chemical vapor deposition on arbitrary insulating substrates that can survive ∼1000°C. The as-synthesized graphene is nanocrystalline with a domain size in the order of ∼10 nm. The material possesses a transparency and conductivity similar to standard graphene fabricated by exfoliation or catalysis. A noncatalytic mechanism is proposed to explain the experimental phenomena. The developed technique is scalable and reproducible, compatible with the existing semiconductor technology, and thus can be very useful in nanoelectronic applications such as transparent electronics, nanoelectromechanical systems, as well as molecular electronics. © 2012 IEEE.

Noncatalytic chemical vapor deposition of graphene on high-temperature substrates for transparent electrodes

A noncatalytic chemical vapor deposition mechanism is proposed, where high precursor concentration, long deposition time, high temperature, and flat substrate are needed to grow large-area nanocrystalline graphene using hydrocarbon pyrolysis. The graphene is scalable, uniform, and with controlled thickness. It can be deposited on virtually any nonmetallic substrate that withstands ∼1000 °C. For typical examples, graphene grown directly on quartz and sapphire shows transmittance and conductivity similar to exfoliated or metal-catalyzed graphene, as evidenced by transmission spectroscopy and transport measurements. Raman spectroscopy confirms the sp 2-C structure. The model and results demonstrate a promising transfer-free technique for transparent electrode production. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Low partial pressure chemical vapor deposition of graphene on copper

A systematic study of the Cu-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition of graphene under extremely low partial pressure is carried out. A carbon precursor supply of just P CH4∼ 0.009 mbar during the deposition favors the formation of large-area uniform monolayer graphene verified by Raman spectra. A diluted HNO 3 solution is used to remove Cu before transferring graphene onto SiO 2/Si substrates or carbon grids. The graphene can be made suspended over a ∼12 μm distance, indicating its good mechanical properties. Electron transport measurements show the graphene sheet resistance of ∼0.6 kΩ/□ at zero gate voltage. The mobilities of electrons and holes are ∼1800 cm 2/Vs at 4.2 K and ∼1200 cm 2/Vs at room temperature. © 2011 IEEE.

Controllable chemical vapor deposition of large area uniform nanocrystalline graphene directly on silicon dioxide

Metal-catalyst-free chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of large area uniform nanocrystalline graphene on oxidized silicon substrates is demonstrated. The material grows slowly, allowing for thickness control down to monolayer graphene. The as-grown thin films are continuous with no observable pinholes, and are smooth and uniform across whole wafers, as inspected by optical-, scanning electron-, and atomic force microscopy. The sp 2 hybridized carbon structure is confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. Room temperature electrical measurements show ohmic behavior (sheet resistance similar to exfoliated graphene) and up to 13 of electric-field effect. The Hall mobility is ∼40 cm 2/Vs, which is an order of magnitude higher than previously reported values for nanocrystalline graphene. Transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and transport measurements indicate a graphene crystalline domain size ∼10 nm. The absence of transfer to another substrate allows avoidance of wrinkles, holes, and etching residues which are usually detrimental to device performance. This work provides a broader perspective of graphene CVD and shows a viable route toward applications involving transparent electrodes. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Direct chemical vapor deposition of large-area carbon thin films on gallium nitride for transparent electrodes: A first attempt

Direct formation of large-area carbon thin films on gallium nitride by chemical vapor deposition without metallic catalysts is demonstrated. A high flow of ammonia is used to stabilize the surface of the GaN (0001)/sapphire substrate during the deposition at 950°C. Various characterization methods verify that the synthesized thin films are largely sp 2 bonded, macroscopically uniform, and electrically conducting. The carbon thin films possess optical transparencies comparable to that of exfoliated graphene. This paper offers a viable route toward the use of carbon-based materials for future transparent electrodes in III-nitride optoelectronics, such as GaN-based light emitting diodes and laser diodes. © 1988-2012 IEEE.

On representing chemical environments

We review some recently published methods to represent atomic neighbourhood environments, and analyse their relative merits in terms of their faithfulness and suitability for fitting potential energy surfaces. The crucial properties that such representations (sometimes called descriptors) must have are differentiability with respect to moving the atoms, and invariance to the basic symmetries of physics: rotation, reflection, translation, and permutation of atoms of the same species. We demonstrate that certain widely used descriptors that initially look quite different are specific cases of a general approach, in which a finite set of basis functions with increasing angular wave numbers are used to expand the atomic neighbourhood density function. Using the example system of small clusters, we quantitatively show that this expansion needs to be carried to higher and higher wave numbers as the number of neighbours increases in order to obtain a faithful representation, and that variants of the descriptors converge at very different rates. We also propose an altogether new approach, called Smooth Overlap of Atomic Positions (SOAP), that sidesteps these difficulties by directly defining the similarity between any two neighbourhood environments, and show that it is still closely connected to the invariant descriptors. We test the performance of the various representations by fitting models to the potential energy surface of small silicon clusters and the bulk crystal.

Carbon nanostructure-based field-effect transistors for label-free chemical/biological sensors.

Over the past decade, electrical detection of chemical and biological species using novel nanostructure-based devices has attracted significant attention for chemical, genomics, biomedical diagnostics, and drug discovery applications. The use of nanostructured devices in chemical/biological sensors in place of conventional sensing technologies has advantages of high sensitivity, low decreased energy consumption and potentially highly miniaturized integration. Owing to their particular structure, excellent electrical properties and high chemical stability, carbon nanotube and graphene based electrical devices have been widely developed for high performance label-free chemical/biological sensors. Here, we review the latest developments of carbon nanostructure-based transistor sensors in ultrasensitive detection of chemical/biological entities, such as poisonous gases, nucleic acids, proteins and cells.

The parameter space of graphene chemical vapor deposition on polycrystalline Cu

A systematic study of the parameter space of graphene chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on polycrystalline Cu foils is presented, aiming at a more fundamental process rationale in particular regarding the choice of carbon precursor and mitigation of Cu sublimation. CH 4 as precursor requires H 2 dilution and temperatures ≥1000 °C to keep the Cu surface reduced and yield a high-quality, complete monolayer graphene coverage. The H 2 atmosphere etches as-grown graphene; hence, maintaining a balanced CH 4/H 2 ratio is critical. Such balance is more easily achieved at low-pressure conditions, at which however Cu sublimation reaches deleterious levels. In contrast, C 6H 6 as precursor requires no reactive diluent and consistently gives similar graphene quality at 100-150 °C lower temperatures. The lower process temperature and more robust processing conditions allow the problem of Cu sublimation to be effectively addressed. Graphene formation is not inherently self-limited to a monolayer for any of the precursors. Rather, the higher the supplied carbon chemical potential, the higher the likelihood of film inhomogeneity and primary and secondary multilayer graphene nucleation. For the latter, domain boundaries of the inherently polycrystalline CVD graphene offer pathways for a continued carbon supply to the catalyst. Graphene formation is significantly affected by the Cu crystallography; i.e., the evolution of microstructure and texture of the catalyst template form an integral part of the CVD process. © 2012 American Chemical Society.

Topologically invariant reaction coordinates for simulating multistate chemical reactions.

Evaluating free energy profiles of chemical reactions in complex environments such as solvents and enzymes requires extensive sampling, which is usually performed by potential of mean force (PMF) techniques. The reliability of the sampling depends not only on the applied PMF method but also the reaction coordinate space within the dynamics is biased. In contrast to simple geometrical collective variables that depend only on the positions of the atomic coordinates of the reactants, the E(gap) reaction coordinate (the energy difference obtained by evaluating a suitable force field using reactant and product state topologies) has the unique property that it is able to take environmental effects into account leading to better convergence, a more faithful description of the transition state ensemble and therefore more accurate free energy profiles. However, E(gap) requires predefined topologies and is therefore inapplicable for multistate reactions, in which the barrier between the chemically equivalent topologies is comparable to the reaction activation barrier, because undesired "side reactions" occur. In this article, we introduce a new energy-based collective variable by generalizing the E(gap) reaction coordinate such that it becomes invariant to equivalent topologies and show that it yields more well behaved free energy profiles than simpler geometrical reaction coordinates.

A high performance oxygen storage material for chemical looping processes with CO2 capture

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a novel combustion technology that involves cyclic reduction and oxidation of oxygen storage materials to provide oxygen for the combustion of fuels to CO2 and H2O, whilst giving a pure stream of CO2 suitable for sequestration or utilisation. Here, we report a method for preparing of oxygen storage materials from layered double hydroxides (LDHs) precursors and demonstrate their applications in the CLC process. The LDHs precursor enables homogeneous mixing of elements at the molecular level, giving a high degree of dispersion and high-loading of active metal oxide in the support after calcination. Using a Cu-Al LDH precursor as a prototype, we demonstrate that rational design of oxygen storage materials by material chemistry significantly improved the reactivity and stability in the high temperature redox cycles. We discovered that the presence of sodium-containing species were effective in inhibiting the formation of copper aluminates (CuAl2O4 or CuAlO 2) and stabilising the copper phase in an amorphous support over multiple redox cycles. A representative nanostructured Cu-based oxygen storage material derived from the LDH precursor showed stable gaseous O2 release capacity (∼5 wt%), stable oxygen storage capacity (∼12 wt%), and stable reaction rates during reversible phase changes between CuO-Cu 2O-Cu at high temperatures (800-1000 °C). We anticipate that the strategy can be extended to manufacture a variety of metal oxide composites for applications in novel high temperature looping cycles for clean energy production and CO2 capture. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2013.