Growth and surface engineering of vertically-aligned low-wall-number carbon nanotubes

A novel catalyst of cobalt supported by single crystal MgO was prepared by atomic layer deposition and used for carbon nanotube growth. With CO as carbon source, vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes with predominant double-walled (82%) were produced at 700 °C. Similar carbon nanotube array with a majority of single-walled tubes (62%) was produced at 900 °C using methane as the carbon source. Due to their high flexibility compared with multi-walled carbon nanotubes, the low-wall-number carbon nanotube array could form a 3-dimensional honeycomb-like network when being spread with acetone.