Electo-thermal Gaseous Catalysis In Liquid Phase Synthesis Of Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes(CNTs) has excellent properties and wide potential application.The investigation on CNTs has become a hot topic in the world. Some low cost,easy-to-operate and environmentally friendly methods has been explored for several years.In this paper,a low cost,easy-to-operate and environmentally friendly method has been developed for synthesis of carbon nanotubes by simply electro-thermal heating a substrate in organic liquids.We used Si as the substrates covered with a thin(about 5nm) Fe film.This substrates were electrically heated to the expected temperature in organic liquid.The carbon nanotubes were grown on the substrates by using hydrocarbon such as ethanol.We studied the effect of using hydrocarbon in this methods,and inspects the feasibility of this methods,and sought the optimum parameter.Then,we tried to use the organic wates water as the carbon source to synthesize carbon nanotubes by this methods.The main researches in this paper are as follows: 1.We used ethanol as the carbon source by our methods to synthesize the carbon nanotubes. The results by SEM and TEM showed that the CNTs were grown in just one hour, and the sample consists a great deal of nanotubes.It fully proved the feasibility of the method in this paper.2.Water was introduced into the carbon nanotubes growth reaction to study the effect of water on the carbon nanotubes.The sample was characterized by SEM and TEM.The results showed that,the CNTs synthesized from the suitable amount of water was outstanding,too much or too little water both affected the CNTs yield.3. Acid-Base was introduced into the carbon source to study the effect of acid-base on the CNTs.The results by SEM and TEM showed that,with adding suitable alkalinity,CNTs yield can have a increase in the contrast of acidity.4. We used other hydrocarbon as the carbon source and studied the effect to carbon nanotubes growth reaction.The results showed that a variety of hydrocarbon had the feasibility to synthesize the CNTs.5.We tried to used the organic waste water as the carbon source to synthesize the CNTs,but we failed as the result.The main reason may be the organic waste water contains too much water.