Controlling chirality in growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) is important for exploiting their practical applications. For long it has been conceptually conceived that the structural control of SWNTs is potentially achievable by fabricating nanoparticle catalysts with proper structures on crystalline substrates via epitaxial growth techniques. Here, we have accomplished epitaxial formation of monometallic Co nanoparticles with well-defined crystal structure, and its use as a catalyst in the selective growth of SWNTs. Dynamics of Co nanoparticles formation and SWNT growth inside an atomic-resolution environmental transmission electron microscope at a low CO pressure was recorded. We achieved highly preferential growth of semiconducting SWNTs (~90%) with an exceptionally large population of (6, 5) tubes (53%) in an ambient CO atmosphere. Particularly, we also demonstrated high enrichment in (7, 6) and (9, 4) at a low growth temperature. These findings open new perspectives both for structural control of SWNTs and for elucidating the growth mechanisms.
Single-wall carbon nanotubes with polyiodide chains inside are interesting from two points of view. According to predictions, first, the iodine structure type inside the nanotube is determined by the nanotube geometry. Second, after iodination all nanotubes become metallic. In this work, we made an attempt to check both predictions. To study the diameter-dependent properties we have taken for a gas-phase iodination the pristine single-wall carbon nanotubes grown by three different techniques providing a different average diameter: a chemical vapor deposition with a Co/Mo catalyst (CoMoCat) with a diameter range (0.6-1.3) nm, a high-pressure CO decomposition (HiPCO) -a diameter range (0.8-1.5) nm, and an aerosol technique with Fe catalyst -a diameter range (1.3-2.0) nm. The Raman spectra have shown a complication of the polyiodide chain structure while the nanotube diameter increased. The optical spectroscopy data (a suppression of E 11 band in the UV-Vis-NIR absorption spectrum) have confirmed the theoretical prediction about transformation of all nanotubes into metallic phase after doping.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.