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Growth of high-density carbon nanotube forests on conductive TiSiN supports


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Authors

Yang, J 
Esconjauregui, S 
Robertson, AW 
Guo, Y 
Hallam, T 

Abstract

jats:pWe grow vertically aligned carbon nanotube forests on refractory conductive films of TiSiN and achieve area densities of (5.1 ± 0.1) × 1012 tubes cm−2 and mass densities of about 0.3 g cm−3. The TiSiN films act as diffusion barriers limiting catalyst diffusion into the bulk of the support, and their low surface energy favours catalyst de-wetting, inducing forests to grow by the root growth mechanism. The nanotube area density is maximised by an additional discontinuous AlOx layer, which inhibits catalyst nanoparticle sintering by lateral surface diffusion. The forests and the TiSiN support show ohmic conduction. These results suggest that TiSiN is the favoured substrate for nanotube forest growth on conductors and liable of finding real applications in microelectronics.</jats:p>

Description

This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/106/8/10.1063/1.4913762.

Keywords

Carbon nanotubes, Nanoparticles, Conductors, Thin film growth, Diffusion barriers

Journal Title

Applied Physics Letters

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0003-6951
1077-3118

Volume Title

106

Publisher

AIP Publishing
Sponsorship
The authors acknowledge funding from European project Grafol. J.Y. thanks Sarah Fearn and David McPhail from Imperial College London for use of the SIMS instrument. A.W.R. is supported by EPSRC (Platform Grant Nos. EP/F048009/1 and EP/K032518/1) and Korean Institute for Energy Research. H.S. acknowledges a research fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.