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Large scale production of carbon nanotube arrays on the sphere surface from liquefied petroleum gas at low cost

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  • Chemical Engineering
  • Published:
Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a cheap industrial material, is used as carbon source to produce carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays on ceramic spherical surface on a large scale in the floating catalyst process. The ceramic spheres provide huge surface area and good mobility, leading to the mass production of CNT arrays continuously. The arrays obtained from the surface are of good alignment, and the purity is as high as 97.5%. With the decrease of the growth temperature, CNTs in the array form with small-diameter of about 13 nm can be obtained. Therefore, with the industrial fuel as carbon source and the ceramic sphere as substrate, CNT arrays can easily be produced on large scale at low cost.

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Correspondence to Wei Fei.

Additional information

Supported by the Foundation for the Authors of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertations of China (Grant No. 200548), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20606020), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2006CB0N0702), and the Key Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 106011)

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Zhang, Q., Huang, J., Wei, F. et al. Large scale production of carbon nanotube arrays on the sphere surface from liquefied petroleum gas at low cost. CHINESE SCI BULL 52, 2896–2902 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-007-0458-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-007-0458-8

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