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Silicon promotes the highest single-wall carbon nanotube purity in pulsed laser vaporization

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Abstract

Work with a dual pulsed laser vaporization (DPLV) system built for the synthesis of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) indicates that a key factor in early reports of material purities thought at that time to be as high as 90%, originally attributed to reaction volume confinement by a small-diameter process tube was, at least in part, due rather to an unrecognized source of silicon in those early synthesis experiments. It is demonstrated that Si enhances the product purity by spectroscopic assay of DPLV synthesized product materials produced both with and without the purposeful inclusion of a small quantity of Si along with the Co/Ni catalysts into the targets. Such enhancement of the product purity on the inclusion of Si may find useful application in other methods of SWCNT production, most directly in carbon arc and plasma torch-based syntheses.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, AGR, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Mattrix Technologies Inc. and the University of Florida for financial support.

Funding

Financial support for this work was provided by Mattrix Technologies Inc. (Grant no. AGR0001302) and by the University of Florida.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mattrix Technologies Inc., Gainesville, FL, 32601, USA

    Ramesh Jayaraman

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-6400, USA

    Ramesh Jayaraman

  3. Department of Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-8440, USA

    Andrew G. Rinzler

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Correspondence to Andrew G. Rinzler.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Consent for publication was obtained for every individual person’s data included in the study.

Financial interest

Andrew Rinzler serves on the Mattrix Board of Directors (receiving no financial compensation). The University of Florida Research Foundation has filed a provisional patent on behalf of the authors for the use of Si to enhance the SWCNT purity during their synthesis in reactions where gaseous oxygen is not a necessary component.

Employment

Ramesh Jayaraman was simultaneously an employee of Mattrix Technologies Inc. and a PhD candidate in the UF Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering. This work performed in partial fulfillment of his candidacy.

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Jayaraman, R., Rinzler, A.G. Silicon promotes the highest single-wall carbon nanotube purity in pulsed laser vaporization. Appl. Phys. A 129, 533 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06813-9

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