Growth of high-quality carbon nanotubes on free-standing diamond substrates

✍ Scribed by C. Varanasi; J. Petry; L. Brunke; B.T. Yang; W. Lanter; J. Burke; H. Wang; J.S. Bulmer; J. Scofield; P.N. Barnes

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 537 KB
• Volume: 48
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-6223
• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2010.03.013

✦ Synopsis

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were grown on diamond-coated Si substrates and free-standing diamond wafers to develop efficient thermal interface materials for thermal management applications. High-quality, translucent, free-standing diamond substrates were processed in a 5 kW microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system using CH 4 as precursor. Ni and Ni-9%W-1.5%Fe catalyst islands were deposited to nucleate CNTs directly onto the diamond substrates. Randomly-oriented multi-walled CNTs forming a mat of $5 lm thickness and consisting of $20 nm diameter tubes were observed to grow in a thermal CVD system using C 2 H 2 as precursor. Transmission electron microscopy and Raman analyses confirmed the presence of high-quality CNTs on diamond showing a D/G peak ratio of 0.2-0.3 in Raman spectra.