Analysis of growth temperature variation and different catalysts on the morphology of synthesized carbon nanotubes

This paper reports the effect of growth temperature (i.e., 750 °C, 800 °C, and 850 °C) and catalysts (iron (Fe) and nickel (Ni)) on the synthesis of carbon nanotubes. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Raman spectroscopy is used to study the morphological properties of synthesized carbon-nanotubes. It was observed from SEM results that longer, straight and clean nanotubes with lesser defect density are synthesized when iron is used as catalyst at higher growth temperature. Raman spectroscopy result shows that the defect density decreases with the increase in growth temperature. TEM images revealed that crystalline multi-walled carbon nanotubes were grown at higher growth temperature for iron as catalyst. The electrochemical performance of synthesized thin films of multi-walled carbon nanotubes as active supercapacitor electrodes evaluated using cyclic voltammetry and is 61 F/g.