RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY AND MORPHOLOGY CHARACTERIZATIONS OF SWCNTs SYNTHESIZED BY KrF EXCIMER LASER ABLATION UNDER NEON GAS ATMOSPHERE

In this article, single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) were obtained by the KrF excimer laser ablation method in Neon gas atmosphere with 70 L/h flow rate at 500 Torr and temperature of 1100 degrees C. The target was prepared from a mixture of C/Ni/Co = 98.8/0.6/0.6 (atomic percentage). The ablation material was characterized by micro Raman spectroscopy, high resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (HR-STEM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The ablated product contains SWCNTs, low amount of amorphous carbon and metallic catalyst nanoparticles. We found that the SWCNTs obtained are a mixture of semiconducting and metallic types. The SWCNTs in the raw material are organized in bundles and individual tubes with high length having the diameter in the range of 2.5-42 nm for bundles and 1.0-1.7 nm for the individual tubes.