Carbon nanotube arrays

As a new frontier in low-dimensional material and nanotechnology, carbon nanotubes research has significant potential for scientific breakthrough and technological innovation. The corporations of scientists in materials and physics as well as chemistry, for example, are already beginning to bear fruit. However, the fabrication in large-scale and high quality of carbon nanotubes is still an essential problem, which entirely correlates with basic properties and potential applications of nanotubes. In this paper, we outline the recent progress about fabrication of aligned and very long carbon nanotubes, which has been done in our research group. Carbon nanotube arrays were prepared by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of hydrocarbon gas on various substrates. The effect of substrates on the growth, morphology and structure of carbon nanotubes were investigated. Aligned carbon nanotubes with high density and purity were achieved by CVD on bulk silica substrate. On the film-like substrates, very long carbon nanotubes of length ∼2 mm were produced, which is an order of magnitude longer (1 mm vs. 100 μm) than that described in most previous reports.