AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    Thin Film Thursday Sessions
       Session TF+PS-ThM

Paper TF+PS-ThM2
CVD Infiltration of Carbon into Carbon Nanotube Forests for Templated Microfabrication

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 8:20 am, Room 102 C

Session: Advanced CVD Methods
Presenter: R.R. Vanfleet, Brigham Young University
Authors: R.R. Vanfleet, Brigham Young University
W. Fazio, Brigham Young University
J.M. Lund, Brigham Young University
K. Zufelt, Brigham Young University
T. Wood, Brigham Young University
D.D. Allred, Brigham Young University
R.C. Davis, Brigham Young University
B.D. Jensen, Brigham Young University
Correspondent: Click to Email
Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) of materials into patterned frameworks of carbon nanotube forests can be used to create precise high-aspect-ratio (up to 200:1) microstructures. We call this process carbon nanotube templated microfabrication (CNT-M). The “as grown” CNT forests are very low density (at 0.009 g/cc the forest is ~1% carbon and 99% air) and not useful as mechanical materials themselves because they are extremely fragile, due to their low density and weak intratube bonding. However, when we replace the air spaces between tubes in the forest with a filler material by atomistic deposition, the infiltrated CNT framework becomes a robust microstructure consisting mostly of the filler material. We have used various deposition techniques to infiltrate the CNT framework with a range of materials. This presentation will focus on the fabrication and characterization of structures using CVD of carbon into the nanotube forest. A range of characterization has been applied to the materials and resulting structures from high resolution electron microscopies of the base materials to bending and failure tests of full structures. The materials consist of nanocrystalline graphitic carbon coated on multiwalled carbon nanotubes. The complete structures exhibit fairly low Young’s modulus (5-15 GPa), and ultimate strength (100-200 MPa) with a resulting high maximum strain of over 2%.