Growth of large periodic arrays of carbon nanotubes

Large periodic arrays of carbon nanotubes have been grown by plasma-enhanced hot filament chemical vapor deposition on periodic arrays of nickel dots that were prepared by polystyrene nanosphere lithography. A single layer of self-assembled polystyrene spheres was first uniformly deposited on a silicon wafer as a mask, and then electron beam vaporization was used to deposit a nickel layer through the mask. The size of and spacing between the nickel dots are tunable by varying the diameter of the polystyrene spheres, which consequently determines the diameter and site density of carbon nanotubes. The technique can be scaled up at much lower cost than electron beam lithography.