Atmospheric Plasmas for Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs)

This chapter has various Atmospheric-pressure plasmas (APP) sources that have been used for Carbon Nanotubes (CNT) growth are introduced. The APP technologies such as dielectric barrier discharges, plasma jet discharges, corona discharges, and so forth, that will be discussed in the chapter are not commercially available for CNT growth and are still under development in laboratories. CNTs are tubular structures with walls of hexagonal carbon, diameters as small as 0.7 nm, and lengths up to several microns, usually capped at one end by fullerene. Due to their one-dimensional nature, charge carriers can travel through nanotubes without scattering, resulting in ballistic transport. CNTs have been synthesized by researchers using many different growth methods including low-pressure arc discharges, thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD), low pressure plasma-enhanced (CVD), atmospheric pressure plasma enhanced CVD, and so forth. The characteristics of the CNTs grown by the APP sources will also be discussed as functions of various growth conditions including growth temperature, plasma properties.