Growth Mechanism of Oriented Long Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes Using “Fast-Heating” Chemical Vapor Deposition Process

The growth mechanism of long and aligned single walled carbon nanotubes using a recently reported “fast heating” chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method is discussed. The effect of heating speed at the initial stage of the CVD process has been systematically studied, and a “kite-mechanism” for the nanotube growth is proposed. The understanding of the growth mechanism would enable us to design future experiments to obtain better control of the morphology of the produced nanotubes.