Pyrolysis of organometallic precursors such as metallocenes and iron pentacarbonyl as well as of their mixtures with hydrocarbons such as acetylene or benzene has been carried out under a variety of conditions to synthesize nanotubes. While the use of benzene as a hydrocarbon source generally yields multi-walled nanotubes, it has been possible to obtain single-walled nanotubes (similar to 1 nm diameter) by pyrolyzing a metallocene or a mixture of metallocenes along with acetylene under a high flow rate of Ar. These experiments show that the organometallic precursor produces small nanoparticles of similar to 1 nm diameter which then catalyze the formation of the single-walled nanotubes. Copious quantities of aligned-nanotube bundles have been obtained by the pyrolysis of acetylene in the presence of high concentrations of ferrocene. Nanorods have been produced by the pyrolysis of ferrocene under vacuum. Single walled nanotubes can be filled or decorated by metals.
Tenne, Reshef; Rao, C N R(Royal Society London, 2004-10-15)
Following the discovery of carbon fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, it was hypothesized that nanoparticles of inorganic compounds with layered (two-dimensional) structure, such as MoS2, will not be stable against folding ...
Rao, C N R; Nath, Manashi(Royal Society of Chemistry, 2003)
Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1991. It was soon recognized that layered metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2 could also form fullerene and nanotube type structures, and the first synthesis was reported in 1992. Since ...
Deepak, F L; Govindaraj, A; Rao, C N R(Indian Academy of Sciences, 2006-01)
Pyrolysis of thiophene over nickel nanoparticles dispersed on silica is shown to yield Y-junction carbon nanotubes with smaller diameters than those obtained by the pyrolysis of organometallic-thiophene mixtures. In the ...
