Single-walled carbon nanotubes produced by catalytic chemical vapor deposition of acetylene over Fe–Mo/MgO catalyst

High-quality single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with few defects and very small amount of amorphous carbon coating have been produced by catalytic decomposition of C2H2 over MgO supported Fe–Mo bimetallic catalyst at 800 °C. The diameters of SWNTs are in the range of 0.80–2.43 nm from Raman analysis. The use of MgO support facilitates a large-scale synthesis of SWNTs with a smaller diameter compared with Al2O3 support material. This work indicates that MgO is useful support material to realize the synthesis of high-quality SWNTs at high yield using C2H2 carbon source.