AVS 50th International Symposium
    Nanotubes Wednesday Sessions
       Session NT-WeP

Paper NT-WeP2
Large-Area Growth of Aligned Carbon Nanotubes by Hot-Filament Assisted DC Plasma CVD

Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 11:00 am, Room Hall A-C

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: K. Ueda, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
Authors: K. Ueda, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
T. Negishi, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
Y. Hayashi, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
S. Nishino, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan
Correspondent: Click to Email
Hot-filament assisted dc plasma chemical vapor deposition (HF/DC-PCVD),@footnote 1@ in which a plasma is generated between the anode of hot-filaments and the cathode of a substrate, was developed to grow carbon nanotubes in a large-scale. Carbon nanotubes are expected to be used for the field emitters of a field emission display (FED) because their high aspect ratio and small radius of curvature lead to large electric-field enhancement at their tips resulting in low operating voltage for electron emission. However the method of large area growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes should be developed to be applied to field emitters of FED. We have succeeded to grow well-aligned carbon nanotubes on an iron substrate of 5 X 5 cm@super 2@ in a CH@sub 4@/H@sub 2@ DC plasma at 2.7KPa (20Torr) by HF/DC-PCVD. In this process, the plasma sheath plays an important role for the growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. The sheath was formed all over the substrate with uniform thickness, i.e., uniform electric field strength, when three hot-filaments spaced 5mm were stretched parallel to the substrate. In order to grow well-aligned carbon nanotubes on a larger substrate, we generated plasma above a substrate of 10 X 10 cm@super 2@ at 1.35KPa (10Torr) using three hot-filaments spaced 15mm. Therefore the large-area growth of well aligned carbon nanotubes on a 10 X 10 cm@super 2@ substrate is expected. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@Y.Hayashi, T.Negishi, and S.Nishino, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 19(2001) 1796.