《Growth Mechanisms of Carbon Nanotubes》.pdfVIP

Growth Mechanisms of Carbon Nanotubes Jean-Christophe Charlier1 and Sumio Iijima2 ,3 1 Universit´e Catholique de Louvain Unit´e de Physico-Chimie et de Physique des Mat´eriaux Place Croix du Sud, 1, Bˆatiment Boltzmann, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium charlier@pcpm.ucl.ac.be 2 NEC Corporation, R D Group 34 Miyukigaoka, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan 3 Meijo University, Faculty of Science and Engineering 1-501, Shiogamaguchi Tenpaku, Nagoya, Aichi 4688502, Japan iijimas@meijo-u.ac.jp Abstract. This review considers the present state of understanding of the growth of carbon nanotubes based on TEM observations and numerical simulations. In the highlights of these experimental and theoretical approaches, various mechanisms, already proposed in the literature, for single and multi-shell nanotubes nucleation and growth are reviewed. A good understanding of nanotube growth at the atomic level is probably one of the main issues either to develop a nanotube mass pro- duction process or to control growth in order to obtain well-designed nanotube structures. Nearly ten years after their discovery [1], carbon nanotubes (CNs )are still attracting much interest for their potential applications, which largely de- rives from their unusual structural and electronic properties. Since all these properties are directly related to the atomic structure of the tube, it is es- sential to understand what controls nanotube size, the number of shells, the helicity, and the structure during synthesis. A thorough understanding of the formation mechanisms for these nanotubular carbon systems is crucial to design procedures for controlling the growth conditions to obtain more practical structures, which might be directly available for nanotechnology. In order to optimize the single- and multi-walled nanotube yield and qual- ity