Single-walled carbon nanotubes formation with a continuous CO2-laser: experiments and theory

It has been proved [1] that the use of a CO2-laser system operating in cont inuous wave mode (cw) can be efficiently used for the production of carbon single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs). In this article we first describe in detai l the variable experimental conditions (different ambient gases, static gas pressure, and gas flow) for SWNT formation and summarize the results of th e characterization studies of the synthesized materials. Second, we analyze the influence of the different experimental conditions on the SWNTs format ion process. We show that the heat transport, kinetic, and diffusion proces ses allow us to explain seemingly different formation conditions in a quali tative and semi-quantitative agreement with the experimental results. The p resented self-consistent scenario for nanotube formation in a gas phase all owed us to propose future experiments on testing the mechanism of nanotube formation.