AVS 54th International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Wednesday Sessions
       Session PS1+NS-WeM

Paper PS1+NS-WeM6
Low Temperature Growth of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Oxygen-Assisted Inductively Coupled Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition

Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 9:40 am, Room 606

Session: Plasmas in Nanotechnology
Presenter: C.-H. Hsiao, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Authors: C.-H. Hsiao, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
C.-H. Weng, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Z.-Y. Juang, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
K.-C. Leou, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
C.-H. Tsai, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Correspondent: Click to Email

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have attracted a great deal of attention recently due to their unique physical properties and a wide range of potential applications, in particular, field effect transistors (FET) and nano-photonic devices. It is highly desirable to develop a method compatible with standard semiconductor microfabrication processes for direct synthesis of high quality SWNTs. In this work, we demonstrated a low temperature growth process of SWNTs on silicon substrates by inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) method with CH4/H2 gas mixture as base processing gases. A unique Ni/Al/SiO2 nanocatalysts/support system has also been developed to allow the growth of high quality SWNTs. To further improve the crystalline structure of SWNTs, oxygen was added to the processing gas mixture to remove amorphous carbons during the growth process. Both the scanning electron microscopy and micro-Raman spectra were employed for characterizations of the SWNTs. Parametric experiments were conducted to optimize the O2 fraction in the gas mixture. The SWNTs were successfully synthesized at a temperature as low as 600°C.