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Nano Research 2023, 16(11): 12781-12787 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6174-0
Research Article | Issue | Published: 28 October 2023

Correlating the fluctuated growth of carbon nanotubes with catalyst evolution by atmospheric-pressure environmental transmission electron microscopy

Show Author's Information Rui-Hong Xie1,2,  Lili Zhang1,2( ),  Ruixue Ma1,2,  Xin-Yu Jiao1,2,  Dai-Ming Tang3,  Chang Liu1,2( ),  Hui-Ming Cheng1,4
Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research (IMR), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Institute of Technology for Carbon Neutrality, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China
Keywords:
carbon nanotube, in situ transmission electron microscopy, growth rate, nickel catalyst
Topics:
Carbon nanotubes
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Xie R-H, Zhang L, Ma R, et al. Correlating the fluctuated growth of carbon nanotubes with catalyst evolution by atmospheric-pressure environmental transmission electron microscopy. Nano Research, 2023, 16(11): 12781-12787. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6174-0
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Rate-controlled growth of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and catalyst design are considered efficient ways for the preparation of CNTs with specific structures and properties. However, due to the difficulties in capturing the growth process of the CNTs with tiny size under a complex growth environment, the growth kinetics of CNTs and their correlation with the catalyst seed have been seldom revealed. Here, we investigated the growth process of CNTs from Ni nanoparticles (NPs) in real-time under atmospheric pressure using transmission electron microscopy equipped with a closed gas cell. It was found that the growth rates of CNTs fluctuated, and a phase transition from Ni3C to Ni, and a reshaping of the catalyst NPs occurred during the growth process. We demonstrated that CNTs dynamically interacted with the connected catalyst NPs and the fluctuated growth rates of CNTs were correlated with the structure change of catalyst NPs. The origin of the growth rate fluctuation is attributed to the change of carbon concentration gradient in catalyst NPs.


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Abstract
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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Correlating the fluctuated growth of carbon nanotubes with catalyst evolution by atmospheric-pressure environmental transmission electron microscopy

Show Author's information Rui-Hong Xie1,2, Lili Zhang1,2( ), Ruixue Ma1,2, Xin-Yu Jiao1,2, Dai-Ming Tang3, Chang Liu1,2( ), Hui-Ming Cheng1,4
Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research (IMR), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Institute of Technology for Carbon Neutrality, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China

Abstract

Rate-controlled growth of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and catalyst design are considered efficient ways for the preparation of CNTs with specific structures and properties. However, due to the difficulties in capturing the growth process of the CNTs with tiny size under a complex growth environment, the growth kinetics of CNTs and their correlation with the catalyst seed have been seldom revealed. Here, we investigated the growth process of CNTs from Ni nanoparticles (NPs) in real-time under atmospheric pressure using transmission electron microscopy equipped with a closed gas cell. It was found that the growth rates of CNTs fluctuated, and a phase transition from Ni3C to Ni, and a reshaping of the catalyst NPs occurred during the growth process. We demonstrated that CNTs dynamically interacted with the connected catalyst NPs and the fluctuated growth rates of CNTs were correlated with the structure change of catalyst NPs. The origin of the growth rate fluctuation is attributed to the change of carbon concentration gradient in catalyst NPs.

Keywords: carbon nanotube, in situ transmission electron microscopy, growth rate, nickel catalyst

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 13 July 2023
Revised: 07 September 2023
Accepted: 07 September 2023
Published: 28 October 2023
Issue date: November 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2023

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51802316, 51927803, 52130209, 51972311, and 52188101), Basic Research Project of Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (No. ZR2019ZD49), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province, China (No. 2020-MS-009), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science.

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