Influence of the gas pressure on single-wall carbon nanotube formation Original Research Article

Experiments and modeling are performed to predict the effect of gas pressure on species distributions and nanotube growth rate under specific conditions of synthesis of single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) by arc discharge. Numerical results are compared with experiments in order to find a consistent correlation between the nanotube growth and the pressure. We use argon and helium as buffer gases with a total pressure varied between 0.1 and 1 bar. We experimentally observe that both the anode erosion rate and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area of the as-produced nanotube soot material are very sensitive to the total gas pressure in the reactor.