From helical nanowires, nanocrosses to aligned micro-carbon fibers

We successfully synthesized helical core-shell crystalline SiC/SiO2 nanowires, core-shell crystalline SiC/C nano-crosses and well-aligned core-shell crystalline SiC/C fibers by using a chemical vapor deposition technique. For the helical crystalline SiC/SiO2 nanowires, the SiC core typically has diameters of 10-40 nm with a helical periodicity of 40-80 nm and is covered by a uniform layer of 30-60 nm thick amorphous SiO2. Detailed structural characterizations suggested that the growth of this novel structure was induced by screw dislocations on the nanometer scale. For the core-shell nanocrosses, the crystalline SiC core typically has diameters of 10 to 40 nm and is covered by a uniform layer of 80-110 nm graphitic carbon. The wellaligned SiC/C fibers were shown to be formed by two sequential steps: catalytic SiC growth and graphitic carbon nano-sheets coating. The helical nanowires and core-shell nanocrosses may have potential applications in nano-electronics. The formation mechanism of the carbon fibers suggested that fabrication of field emission filament carbon nano-fibers may be realized by using the aligned crystalline nanowires as templates.