Influence of Ammonia on the Fabrication of Aligned Carbon Nanotubes Using Thermal CVD
Ultra-thin (20 nm) nickel catalyst films were deposited by sputtering on SiO2/Si substrates. At the pretreatments, ammonia (NH3) was conducted for different time in a thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system. Pretreated samples were characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM). After the pretreatment, acetylene was introduced into the chamber for 10 min, samples were characterized using scanning electron micrograph (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). It was concluded that NH3 pretreatment was very crucial to control the surface morphology of catalytic metals and thus to achieve the vertical alignment of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). With higher density of the Ni particles, better alignment of the CNTs can be obtained due to steric hindrance effect between neighboring CNTs.