Low temperature and cost-effective growth of vertically aligned carbon nanofibers using spin-coated polymer-stabilized palladium nanocatalysts

Abstract

We describe a fast and cost-effective process for the growth of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) at a temperature compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, using highly stable polymer–Pd nanohybrid colloidal solutions of palladium catalyst nanoparticles (NPs). Two polymer–Pd nanohybrids, namely poly(lauryl methacrylate)-block-poly((2-acetoacetoxy)ethyl methacrylate)/Pd (LauMAx-b-AEMAy/Pd) and polyvinylpyrrolidone/Pd were prepared in organic solvents and spin-coated onto silicon substrates. Subsequently, vertically aligned CNFs were grown on these NPs by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition at different temperatures. The electrical properties of the grown CNFs were evaluated using an electrochemical method, commonly used for the characterization of supercapacitors. The results show that the polymer–Pd nanohybrid solutions offer the optimum size range of palladium catalyst NPs enabling the growth of CNFs at temperatures as low as 350 °C. Furthermore, the CNFs grown at such a low temperature are vertically aligned similar to the CNFs grown at 550 °C. Finally the capacitive behavior of these CNFs was similar to that of the CNFs grown at high temperature assuring the same electrical properties thus enabling their usage in different applications such as on-chip capacitors, interconnects, thermal heat sink and energy storage solutions.

An efficient and broadly applicable method for transient transformation of plants using vertically aligned carbon nanofiber arrays

“…These publications also provide an overview and workflow of the fabrication of nanofiber arrays. VANCFs can also be produced at university clean rooms with direct current plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition machines ( Liu et al., 2010 ; Salmeen et al., 2015 ). A workflow summarizing important design, quality-control and operational steps for impalefection is provided in Figure 7 .…”

Recent progress in micro-scale energy storage devices and future aspects

“…Vertically aligned CNTs were also fabricated by Saleem et al by using spin-coated polymer-stabilized palladium nanoparticles as the nanocatalyst and further utilized these in SCs as an electrode material. 108 Sammoura et al also fabricated nano-composites of PPy with vertically aligned CNTs and integrated them on silicon based electrodes for SC applications. 109 The direct use of CNTs in inkjet printing is still limited due to their hydrophobic nature and hence the tendency to aggregate even at low concentrations.…”

Performance Enhancement of Carbon Nanomaterials for Supercapacitors

“…These carbon nanofibers can be grown on silicon chips at CMOS compatible temperature (390 ∘ C) creating the possibility to fabricate supercapacitor directly on the chip which can be used as decoupling capacitor and acbypass capacitor and even to power up of on-chip MEMs devices. Vertically aligned CNFs were grown on silicon chip and the areal specific capacitance of about 5.5 mF/cm 2 was obtained [3,110]. Nevertheless, the supercapacitors properties based on CNFs electrodes are summarised in Table 4.…”