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Prediction of optimum catalysts and cocatalysts for chemical growth of carbon nanotubes

  • Fullerenes and Atomic Clusters
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Abstract

A practically important problem of growth of different kinds of carbon nanotubes from nanodrops of a metal catalyst oversaturated by carbon is solved by finding cocatalysts that provide a minimum nucleation energy for the critical nucleus of a nanotube. For pure catalysts, it turns out that the optimum is achieved using atoms of well-known elements of the iron group, which have a minimum energy of the van-der-Waals interaction with graphene islands and a certain energy E Me-C of the interaction with a carbon atom. It is also possible to obtain even more effective catalysts by finding an appropriate ratio of the components by the trial and error method. In particular, the experimentally found combinations nickel-yttrium and cobalt-molybdenum are among the most effective ones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Politekhnicheskaya ul. 26, St. Petersburg, 194021, Russia

    N. I. Alekseev & D. V. Afanas’ev

  2. Innovations of Leningrad Institutions and Enterprises Close Corporation, St. Petersburg, 197022, Russia

    N. A. Charykov

Authors
  1. N. I. Alekseev
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  2. D. V. Afanas’ev
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  3. N. A. Charykov
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Correspondence to N. I. Alekseev.

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Original Russian Text © N.I. Alekseev, D.V. Afanas’ev, N.A. Charykov, 2008, published in Fizika Tverdogo Tela, 2008, Vol. 50, No. 5, pp. 945–953.

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Alekseev, N.I., Afanas’ev, D.V. & Charykov, N.A. Prediction of optimum catalysts and cocatalysts for chemical growth of carbon nanotubes. Phys. Solid State 50, 986–995 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063783408050314

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063783408050314

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