Synthesis of Ultrahigh-Purity (6,5) Carbon Nanotubes Using a Trimetallic Catalyst.

Abstract

Chirality-controlled synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is one of the ultimate goals in the field of nanotube synthesis. At present, direct synthesis achieving a purity of over 90%, which can be called single-chirality synthesis, has been achieved for only two types of chiralities: (14,4) and (12,6) CNTs. Here, we realized an ultrahigh-purity (∼95.8%) synthesis of (6,5) CNTs with a trimetallic catalyst NiSnFe. Partial formation of Ni₃Sn crystals was found within the NiSnFe nanoparticles. The activation energy for the selective growth of (6,5) CNTs decreased owing to the formation of Ni₃Sn crystals, resulting in the high-purity synthesis of (6,5) CNTs. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) reveals that one-dimensional (1D) crystals of periodic strip lines with 8.8 Å spacing are formed within the as-grown ultrahigh-purity (6,5) CNTs, which are well-matched with the simulated TEM image of closely packed 37 (6,5) CNTs with 2.8 Å intertube distance, indicating the direct formation of chirality-pure (6,5)-CNT bundle structures. The photoluminescence (PL) lifetime increases more than 20 times by the formation of chirality-pure bundle structures of (6,5) CNTs compared to that of isolated (6,5) CNTs. This can be explained by exciton delocalization or intertube excitons within bundle structures of chirality-pure (6,5) CNTs.