En Route to High-Density Chiral Single-walled Carbon Nanotube Arrays using Solid Trojan Catalysts

Dayan Liu; Kai Xiang; Shuchen Zhang; Ying Wang; Hongjie Zhang; Taibin Wang; Feng Yang; Ran Du; Jinjie Qian; Zhi Yang; Yue Hu; Shaoming Huang

doi:10.1002/smll.202205540

En Route to High-Density Chiral Single-walled Carbon Nanotube Arrays using Solid Trojan Catalysts

Small. 2023 Feb;19(6):e2205540. doi: 10.1002/smll.202205540. Epub 2022 Dec 3.

Authors

Dayan Liu¹, Kai Xiang², Shuchen Zhang³, Ying Wang¹, Hongjie Zhang¹, Taibin Wang¹, Feng Yang⁴, Ran Du⁵, Jinjie Qian¹, Zhi Yang¹, Yue Hu¹, Shaoming Huang^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials of Zhejiang Province, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, 325000, P. R. China.
² Beijing Key Laboratory of Research and Application for Aerospace Green Propellants, Beijing Institute of Aerospace Testing Technology, Beijing, 100074, P. R. China.
³ Center for Nanochemistry, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
⁵ School of Materials Science & Engineering, Key Laboratory of High Energy Density Materials of the Ministry of Education, Center for Intelligent Health Materials & Devices, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, P. R. China.
⁶ School of Materials and Energy, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Materials and Energy Storage Devices, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, P. R. China.

PMID: 36461727
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202205540

Abstract

Solid catalyst is widely recognized as an effective strategy to control the chirality of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). However, it is still not compatible with high density in horizontal arrays. "Trojan" catalysts strategy is one of the most effective methods to realize SWNTs with high density and has great potential in chirality control. Here, the co-realization of high density and chirality controlling for SWNTs in a low-temperature growth process is reported based on the developed solid "Trojan" catalyst. High temperature "Trojan" catalyst formation process provides sufficient catalyst number to acquire high density. These liquid "Trojan" catalysts are cooled to solid state by adopting low growth temperature (540 °C), which can be good template to realize the chirality controlling of SWNTs with exposing six-fold symmetry face, (111). Finally, (9, 6) and (13, 1) SWNTs enriched horizontal array with the purity of ≈90% and density of 4 tubes µm^-1 is realized. The comparison between the distribution of initial catalysts and the density of as-grown tubes indicates no sacrificing on catalysts number to improve chirality selectivity. This work opens a new avenue on the catalyst's design and chirality controlling in SWNTs growth.

Keywords: chirality growth; high density; phase transition; single-walled carbon nanotubes; solid “Trojan” catalysts.

Abstract

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