Carbothermal shock enabled facile and fast growth of carbon nanotubes in a second
Haomin Wang, Huimin Wang, Shuchen Zhang, Yong Zhang, Kailun Xia, Zhe Yin, Mingchao Zhang, Xiaoping Liang, Haojie Lü, Shuo Li, Jin Zhang, Yingying Zhang
Abstract
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) hold great promise in many fields because of their unique structures and properties. However, the preparation of CNTs generally involves cumbersome equipment and time-consuming processes. Here, we report an ultra-fast carbothermal shock (CTS) approach for synthesizing CNTs with a simple homemade setup by employing Joule heating of a carbon substrate. Carbonized silk fabric (CSF) loaded with transition metal salts in ethanol solution was used as the substrate, which was treated with a pulse voltage of 40 V for only 50 ms and then covered with uniform CNTs grown with bimetallic alloy catalyst nanoparticles (diameter: ∼ 9 nm). The temperature ramp rate is as high as 105 K/s. The as-obtained sample has a unique fluffy structure similar to the trichobothrium of spiders, endowing it versatile applications such as airflow sensors or air filters. The CTS technique presents an easy-accessible and highly efficient approach for synthesizing CNTs, which may be also applied in synthesizing other nanomaterials.