Decorating carbon nanotubes with nickel nanoparticles

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were decorated with Ni clusters by thermal evaporation. It is shown that the CNT decoration with Ni varies from well-organized clusters to the complete coverage of the surface resulting in electronic charge transfer and formation of Ni–C bonds at the interface between these two materials, depending on the evaporated amount of Ni. The Ni–CNTs interaction induces an increase in the metallicity of the system suggesting that CNTs decorated with metal atoms can be a good candidate as template for production of metal nanowires.