Nucleation stability of diamond nanowires inside carbon nanotubes: A thermodynamic approach Original Research Article

Aiming at synthesis diamond nanowires, a simple thermodynamic approach was performed with respect to the effect of nanosize-induced additional pressure on the Gibbs free energy of critical nuclei to elucidate diamond nucleation inside carbon nanotubes upon chemical vapor deposition, based on the carbon thermodynamic equilibrium phase diagram. Notably, these analysis showed that the diamond nucleation would be preferable inside a carbon nanotube due to the effect of surface tension induced by the nanosize curvature of the carbon nanotube and diamond critical nuclei, compared with diamond nucleation on the flat surface of a silicon substrate. Meanwhile, the metastable phase region of diamond nucleation would be driven into a new stable phase region in the carbon thermodynamic equilibrium phase diagram by the effect of nanosize-induced additional pressure. Eventually, we predicted that carbon nanotubes would be an effective path to grow diamond nanowires by chemical vapor deposition.