84% catalyst activity of water-assisted growth of single walled carbon nanotube forest characterization by a statistical and macroscopic approach

Don N Futaba; Kenji Hata; Tatsunori Namai; Takeo Yamada; Kohei Mizuno; Yuhei Hayamizu; Motoo Yumura; Sumio Iijima

doi:10.1021/jp060080e

84% catalyst activity of water-assisted growth of single walled carbon nanotube forest characterization by a statistical and macroscopic approach

J Phys Chem B. 2006 Apr 20;110(15):8035-8. doi: 10.1021/jp060080e.

Authors

Don N Futaba¹, Kenji Hata, Tatsunori Namai, Takeo Yamada, Kohei Mizuno, Yuhei Hayamizu, Motoo Yumura, Sumio Iijima

Affiliation

¹ Research Center for Advanced Carbon Materials, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba 305-8565, Japan.

PMID: 16610904
DOI: 10.1021/jp060080e

Abstract

We propose a statistical and macroscopic analysis to estimate the catalyst activity of water-assisted growth (super-growth) of single-walled nanotubes (SWNT) and to characterize SWNT forests. The catalyst activity was estimated to be 84% (+/-6%), the highest ever reported. The SWNT forest was found to be a very sparse material where SWNTs represent only 3.6% of the total volume. This structural sparseness is believed to play a critical role in achieving highly efficient growth.