Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition of Horizontally Aligned Carbon Nanotubes

A plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition reactor has been developed to synthesis horizontally aligned carbon nanotubes. The width of the aligning sheath was modelled based on a collisionless, quasi-neutral, Child's law ion sheath where these estimates were empirically validated by direct Langmuir probe measurements, thereby confirming the proposed reactors ability to extend the existing sheath fields by up to 7 mm. A 7 mbar growth atmosphere combined with a 25 W plasma permitted the concurrent growth and alignment of carbon nanotubes with electric fields of the order of 0.04 V μm-1 with linear packing densities of up to ~5 × 10⁴ cm-1. These results open up the potential for multi-directional insitu alignment of carbon nanotubes providing one viable route to the fabrication of many novel optoelectronic devices.