Many potential applications of carbon nanotubes are expected to beneÀt from the availability of single-walled À carbon nanotube materials enriched in metallic species, and specifically armchair nanotubes. The present work focuses on the modification of the pulsed laser vaporization (PLV) technique to selectively produce certain carbon nanotube structures. Nanotube nuclei were "warmed-up" with an additional laser pulse, timed to coincide approximately with the nucleation event. The effect of the second laser on the carbon vapor temperature was studied by emission spectroscopy. Nanotube type populations with and without warm-up were compared by means of absorption, photoluminescence, and Raman spectroscopy. It was found that the warm-up of nanotube nuclei with a laser pulse has a noticeable, albeit small, effect on the nanotube population. The intensity of spectral features associated with (9,7) nanotube and its large chiral angle neighbors increased, while small chiral angle nanotubes decreased, with exception of the (15,0) tube. This experiment demonstrates that nanotube population during PLV synthesis can be manipulated in a controlled fashion.
KEYWORDSNanotube synthesis, pulsed laser vaporization, nanotube population.
Nano ResearchAs with other nanomaterials, the electronic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) strongly depend on their size and molecular structure, which can be conveniently expressed in terms of chiral indices (n, m) [1]. Nanotubes with n = m (armchair nanotubes) are metallic at room temperature while those with n m = 3j 3 , (j ( = 1, 2, 3…) are strictly semi-metals, but often called metals along with armchairs. Nanotubes with n m = 3j 3 + 1 and n m = 3j 3 + 2 (j ( = 0, 1, 2, 3…) are semiconductors with a band gap that varies approximately inversely with diameter. Metallic and semi-metallic nanotubes exhibit singularities in the electron density of states similar to semiconducting ones, with corresponding optical transition energies inversely proportional to the diameter.Such wealth of available electronic properties presents many opportunities to utilize SWCNTs 819 Nano Res (2009) 2: 818 827 in various applications, such as field emission sources, transistors, interconnects on microchips, conductive transparent films, and photovoltaics [2 7]. Most of these applications will benefit from use of certain (n,m) nanotube types (metallic, small gap semiconductor, etc.) However, as-produced SWCNT samples are polydisperse, with many (n,m) types present and typical metal/semiconductor ratios of ~1:2. This lack of specificity in SWCNT samples is one of the primary reasons why they are rarely used in commercial applications today. An ability to "tweak the knobs" on the SWCNT synthesis set-up to produce a desired narrow range of (n,m) structures would greatly simplify the costly type separation [8], or even render it unnecessary. However, it seems that the only "knob" that has been touched so far is the synthesis temperature. The best known example is low temperature CoMoCat SWCN...