Fabrication of Coiled Carbon Nanotubes by Chemical Vapour Deposition and Focused Ion Beam

Abstract

A novel approach to fabricate coiled carbon nanotubes based on floating-catalyst chemical vapour deposition and focused ion beam was put forward. The numerous toroidal carbon nanotubes were synthesized and then accurately processed to coiled carbon nanotubes. The effect of catalysts on the synthesis of toroidal carbon nanotubes and the fabrication of coiled carbon nanotubes by focused ion beam machining techniques were discussed. This post-processing approach revealed the intrinsic relation between toroidal and coiled carbon nanotubes, which broke through the correspondingly isolated fabrication methods in the past. Compared with the recent improved methods, such as the fluidised-bed method, coprecipitation/reduction method and spray-pyrolysis method, etc., it could flexibly and accurately adjust the structural parameters, which laid the foundation for applications of coiled carbon nanotubes in the design of precise nanoelectromagnetic devices with special requests.