Department of Chemistry, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.
J Am Chem Soc. 2010 Jan 13;132(1):336-41. doi: 10.1021/ja908414v.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted attention for their remarkable electrical properties and have being explored as one of the best building blocks in nano-electronics. A key challenge to realize such potential is the control of the nanotube growth directions. Even though both vertical growth and controlled horizontal growth of carbon nanotubes have been realized before, the growth of complex nanotube structures with both vertical and horizontal orientation control on the same substrate has never been achieved. Here, we report a method to grow three-dimensional (3D) complex nanotube structures made of vertical nanotube forests and horizontal nanotube arrays on a single substrate and from the same catalyst pattern by an orthogonally directed nanotube growth method using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). More importantly, such a capability represents a major advance in controlled growth of carbon nanotubes. It enables researchers to control the growth directions of nanotubes by simply changing the reaction conditions. The high degree of control represented in these experiments will surely make the fabrication of complex nanotube devices a possibility.
碳纳米管（CNTs）因其优异的电学性能而备受关注，并被探索作为纳米电子学中最好的构建块之一。实现这一潜力的关键挑战是控制纳米管的生长方向。尽管之前已经实现了垂直生长和受控的水平生长，但从未在同一衬底上实现具有垂直和水平取向控制的复杂纳米管结构的生长。在这里，我们报告了一种使用化学气相沉积（CVD）通过正交定向纳米管生长方法在单个衬底上从相同的催化剂图案生长由垂直纳米管林和水平纳米管阵列组成的三维（3D）复杂纳米管结构的方法。更重要的是，这种能力代表了碳纳米管可控生长的重大进展。它使研究人员能够通过简单地改变反应条件来控制纳米管的生长方向。这些实验中表现出的高度控制肯定会使复杂纳米管器件的制造成为可能。
