Journal of Inorganic Materials

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Effect of the La-Ni-O Catalyst Precursor on Carbon Nanotubes Growth

SONG Li-Jun, JIANG Qi, YI Jin, ZHU Xiao-Tong, ZHAO Yong   

  1. (Key Laboratory of Advanced Technologies of Materials (Ministry
    of Education of China), Superconductivity Research and Development Center &
    School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China)
  • Received:2005-12-29 Revised:2006-02-27 Published:2006-11-20 Online:2006-11-20

Abstract: A series of La-Ni-O compounds were synthesized with modifying the mol ratio of La to Ni by citric acid complexometry and used as the catalyst precursors to prepare carbon nanotubes (CNT) by the chemical vapor deposition method (CVD). At the same time, H2, N2 and C2H2 were used as the reduction gas, protection gas and carbon source gas, respectively. The structures of the catalyst precursors before and after reducing by H2 were characterized by XRD and the patterns of the CNT obtained from the catalyst precursors were characterized by TEM. The results show that only chemical compounds LaNiO3 and La2NiO4 in the series La-Ni-O catalyst precursors have the ability to prepare CNT. However, the yield of CNT from the catalyst precursor LaNiO3 is greatly higher than that from the catalyst precursor La2NiO4. And the reason is that the content of nano-meter metal Ni (111) crystal face in the productions from LaNiO3 after being reduced is higher than that from La2NiO4. That is to say the higher the content of nano-meter metal Ni (111) crystal face and the larger the grain size, the higher the yield of CNT and the larger the inner diameter of CNT.

Key words: carbon nanotubes, La-Ni-O, catalyst precursor

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