Carbon Solubility in a Nickel Catalyst with the Growth of Carbon Nanotubes
Sergey V. Bulyarskiy, E. P. Kitsyuk, A. V. Lakalin, Alexander A. Pavlov, R. M. Ryazanov
Abstract
The work studies the synthesis of carbon nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition using a thin-film nickel-based catalyst. The size distributions of all catalyst nanoparticles are compared with the distribution of particles from which carbon nanotube growth is observed. It is established that in this mode nanotubes grow mainly from particles of 7 to 19 nm, and nanotubes rarely grow from particles outside this size range. A thermodynamic model of the solubility of carbon in nickel nanoparticles is developed and it is shown that for each set of parameters of the synthesis process there is a critical minimum size of the catalyst nanoparticle in which carbon can dissolve.