Journal Article

Carbothermal shock enabled facile and fast growth of carbon nanotubes in a second

Liang, Xiaoping, Wang, Haomin, Yin, Zhe, Zhang, Jin, Wang, Huimin, Zhang, Shuchen, Li, Shuo, Zhang, Mingchao, Lu, Haojie, Zhang, Yingying, Zhang, Yong, Xia, Kailun

2022

Overview

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 10 5 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.

• Publisher: Tsinghua University Press
• Subject: Air filters / Air flow / Atomic/Molecular Structure and Spectra / Bimetals / Biomedicine / Biotechnology / Carbon / Carbon nanotubes / Carbon sources / Catalysts / Cerebrospinal fluid / Chemistry and Materials Science / Condensed Matter Physics / Ethanol / Materials Science / Nanoalloys / Nanomaterials / Nanoparticles / Nanotechnology / Nanotubes / Ohmic dissipation / Recarburizing / Research Article / Resistance heating / Salts / Silk / Substrates / Synthesis / Transition metals