Currently, a wide range of industries, such as electronics, optics, drug delivery and water purification, employ rolls of shaped graphite sheets. honeycomb called carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to achieve innovations on a scale like never before
CNTs have features such as practical structure, light weight, superior thermal and electrical conductivity, stability and robust mechanical strength Thus, they have an advantage over other material alternatives
But to meet their ever-growing industrial demand, it is crucial to continuously increase their production, where the main challenge of using CNTs lies
While researchers have been able to develop individual CNTs approximately 50 cm long, efforts to make networks or forests stop at approximately 2 cm
This is because the catalyst, which is essential for the growth of CNTs, becomes deactivated and / or depleted before the CNTs in a forest can grow longer This increases the monetary and raw material expenditure of the CNT production and threatens to end its industrial use
A group of Japanese scientists have now developed a revolutionary approach In an article published in the journal Carbon, the researchers describe an innovative approach to a traditional method that produces CNT forests of record length: about 14 cm, which is seven times greater than the maximum value reached previously
In the conventional technique, CNTs stop growing due to a gradual structural change of the catalyst, so we focused on developing a new technique that suppresses this structural change and allows CNTs to grow for a period of time. longer period
To start, the researchers created a catalyst by applying the results of an earlier study Then, they added a layer of gadolinium (Gd) to the traditional iron-aluminum oxide (Fe / Al2Ox) catalyst coated on a silicon substrate (Si) The Gd layer stopped the deterioration of the catalyst to some extent, allowing the forest to grow up to about 5cm in length
To prevent catalyst deterioration, the researchers placed the catalyst in their original chamber known as the cold gas chemical vapor deposition (CVD) chamber The catalyst was heated to 750 ° C and provided it with small concentrations (parts per million) of Fe and Al vapors at room temperature
This helps the catalyst to function stably for 26 hours, which has allowed a dense forest of CNT to grow up to 14cm Several studies to characterize cultivated CNTs have shown to be competitively strong and of high purity
This success not only overcomes the obstacles to the extensive industrial application of CNTs, but also paves the way for nanoscience research
This simple but innovative method which dramatically extends catalyst life by providing ppm level vapor sources is of interest for catalyst engineering in other fields such as petrochemicals and crystal growth of nanomaterials The knowledge contained in this document could be essential to make nanomaterials an ubiquitous reality
Sugime, H, et al (2020) Ultra-long carbon nanotube forest via in situ supplements of iron and aluminum vapor sources Carbon is what jeorg / 101016 / jcarbone2020dix066
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Carbon nanotube, carbon, industry, OCSiAl, nanotechnology
News from the world – UA – New method helps develop forest of record-length carbon nanotubes