Question

What are carbon nanotubes? How they are synthesized by electric arc discharge.

Answer 1

multi-walled carbon nanotubes are synthesized by arc-discharge and chemical vapor decomposition methods. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes are synthesized on thin film of nickel sputtered on silicon substrate by thermal chemical vapor deposition of acetylene at a temperature of 750°C. The flow of current in arc-discharge method varies in the range 50–200 A. Further arc-synthesized carbon nanotubes are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the results are compared with nanotubes grown by chemical vapor deposition method. XRD result shows a characteristic peak (0 0 2) at 26.54° corresponding to the presence of carbon nanotubes. SEM and TEM results give morphology of as-synthesized multi-walled nanotubes. TEM results indicate synthesis of well-graphitized carbon nanotubes by arc-discharge method. Dispersion of arc-synthesized nanotubes in SDS solution under the effect of different sonication times is studied.