Low-temperature carbon nanowire growth at microgap by corona-discharge-assisted thermal chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

Because of the intriguing electrical and mechanical properties of carbon nanowires, many researchers exploit them by incorporating them in many applications such as field emitter and sensors. Despites the many advantages of carbon nanowires, they are not widely used in real applications because of the difficulty in positioning them at the desired location, even though many methods have been attempted to achieve this goal. Here we show that we can grow carbon nanowires by corona-discharge-assisted thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD). A chrome/nickel bilayer was used as the electrode to generate the corona discharge. Additionally, nickel acted as the catalyst to initiate carbon growth and chrome acted as the structural support. C2H4 gas flow was introduced into the growth tube as the carbon source at a certain growth temperature. Experiments were conducted to grow the carbon nanowires horizontally and vertically.