High-yield production of single-wall carbon nanotubes in nitrogen gas
Daisuke Nishidea, H. Kataurab, S. Suzukia,*, K. Tsukagoshic, Y. Aoyagic, Y. AchibaaaDepartment of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University,
Minami-Osawa 1-1, Hachiohji, Tokyo 192-0397, Japanb

Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University,
Minami-Osawa 1-1, Hachiohji, Tokyo 192-0397, Japanc

RIKEN, Hirosawa 2-1, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan

Received 30 November 2002; in final form 26 January 2003
Abstract
To see roles of an ambient gas on the formation process of single-wall carbon
nanotubes (SWNTs), we have prepared SWNTs by laser ablation with Ne, Ar, Kr and N2
gases and estimated the abundances of SWNTs mainly by Raman spectroscopy. The
abundance of SWNTs was found to depend systematically on the pressure and themolecular mass of the ambient gas, and the highest abundance was obtained in N2 at
1000 Torr. Only N2 produced thinner SWNTs than any other gases, which suggests thatthe size of nanotube precursors is sensitively affected by the internal freedom ofambient gas.

* Corresponding author, FAX: +81-426-77-2525

E-mail address: suzuki-shinzo@c.metro-u.ac.jp
11. Introduction
In a synthesis process of single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) by laser ablation, 500
Torr argon gas has been used empirically as an ambient gas [1]. Recently, Jost et al.
studied the correlation between abundances of SWNTs and conditions of ambient gas
by using several inert gasses with various pressures [2]. They showed that theabundance of SWNTs was systematically changed and was roughly scalable by thepressure and molecular weight of the ambient gas. Zhang et al. synthesized SWNTs in anitrogen atmosphere and confirmed that nitrogen was not reactive in the formation
process [3]. However, detailed experimental condition has not yet been optimized to gethigh-purity SWNTs.
The present report is aimed to get the highest abundance of SWNTs by laser ablation
using several inert gases at various pressures. The abundances and diameter
distributions of the produced SWNTs were precisely checked by scanning electron
microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), optical absorption
spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy.
2. Experimental
SWNTs were synthesized by laser ablation using a Ni/Co (0.6/0.6 at.%) carbon
composite rod. Details of the equipment are described elsewhere [4]. A quartz tube washeated to 1200 °C by an electric furnace, since SWNTs were found to result in thehighest yield at 1200 °C when this catalyst was used in nitrogen atmosphere as well as
in argon [5]. This indicates that the temperature for the optimum yield of SWNTs does
not depend on the kind of ambient gas. The second harmonics of the Nd:YAG laser
pulse (532nm, 10Hz, 300mJ/pulse) was focused on the surface of the composite rod
which was rotating inside of the quartz tube. Neon, argon, krypton, and nitrogen wereused as ambient gases. Gas pressure was set between 100 and 1500 Torr. Previous
studies [5,6] clearly demonstrated that the diameter distribution of SWNTs was
influenced by the flow rate of the ambient gas inside the quartz tube. The following
reasoning can account for this effect. Though the temperature gradient in the central
area of the furnace is very small, it is much larger near the exit (from 1200 °C to room
temperature). Thus the growth process of SWNTs is significantly affected by thegradient when the flow rate (of ambient gas and, as a result, carbon and metal particles)
is varied. In the present work the flow rate (linear velocity) of the ambient gas, insteadof the velocity (pumping speed, cm3/s), was fixed to 0.88 cm/s, so that the vaporized
carbon and metal species could feel identical temperature-gradient history during the
growth of SWNTs inside the furnace.

2The abundance of SWNTs in the raw soot was investigated by SEM and TEM
observation. The precise diameter distribution and the purity of SWNTs were estimatedby Raman and optical absorption spectroscopy.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Estimation of the abundance of SWNTs
Typical tangential-mode Raman spectra of raw soot synthesized under different
conditions are shown in Fig. 1(a). A double peak appearing at 1593 cm-1, so-called the
G-band, is characteristic of SWNT, and a broad peak around 1350 cm-1, the D-band, isusually regarded as the Raman mode of amorphous carbon. For a low-purity sample, theintensity ratio, G/D, reflects the abundance of SWNTs in the soot and is often used as anindex of purity of the SWNT sample [5]. However, as indicated by a solid curve in Fig.
1(a) high-purity SWNTs have a narrower peak due to defects on the wall of SWNTs atthe position of the D-band [7], and this narrow peak is higher for a sample of higher
purity. Therefore, this G/D ratio is not a suitable index of purity for a high-purity sample.
Basically, the Raman intensity of SWNT is strongly enhanced by the resonance effect [8,9]. Since the resonance effect of amorphous carbon is much weaker, the absolute Raman
intensity of the G-band is always a good index of purity of the sample. In this work,
therefore, we measured the Raman spectra with great care to keep reproducibility, andthen the integrated intensity of the G-band was used to evaluate the purity of SWNTs.
The results are plotted in Fig. 1(b) as a function of the ambient gas pressure.
As shown in Fig. 1(b), the abundance of SWNTs depends on the ambient gas. The
best abundance was obtained with N2 at 1000 Torr and the second best cases were Ar at
1000 Torr and Ne at 1500 Torr; Kr at 800 Torr showed the lowest abundance. Thisfinding can be explained as a systematic change in the abundance by their molecularmasses, 20, 28, 40 and 84 for Ne, N2, Ar and Kr, respectively. Namely, the abundance of
SWNTs increases from Ne to N2 with the molecular mass and then decreases from N2 to
Kr. A similar tendency has been reported [2].
In addition, the abundance of SWNTs strongly depends on the gas pressure. The
Raman intensity of Ar at 1000 Torr is 1.8 times as large as that at 500 Torr. For all thegases the abundance first increases linearly with pressure, and then exhibits a broad
maximum at an optimum pressure excepting Ne. According to a simple model
introduced in Ref. [2], Ne gas should take the optimum pressure around 2000 Torr, far
beyond our experimental condition. Indeed, our result suggests that the optimumpressure of Ne gas should exceed 1600 Torr. The most important outcome of the present

3study is the very high abundance observed for N2 at 1000 Torr, which has never beenreported.
SEM images of untreated raw soot synthesized in various gases are shown in Figs.
2(a)-(d). Many amorphous carbon materials, like lumps of cotton in their SEM images,
were observed in Fig. 2(d); this displays low purity of the SWNTs produced in Kr. The
amount of amorphous carbons appearing in Fig. 2(a) and (b) are much less than that inFig. 2(d). SWNTs seem to have gathered with higher density in Fig. 2(a) than the others.
On the other hand, TEM images (not shown) have also indicated a similar tendency of
the abundance. Especially, many bare metal particles are found in the TEM image of theN2 sample, whereas metal particles in the other samples are covered with amorphous
carbon. These bare metal particles indicate that all the surrounding amorphous carbon isconverted to SWNTs. These intuitive estimations of the abundance using SEM andTEM observations are consistent with that of purity by the Raman analysis.
3.2. Low-frequency Raman spectra of SWNTs
Figure 3 indicates the Raman spectrum of the soot produced in each condition
described above. The Raman peaks observed in this range are the radial breathingmodes (RBMs) of SWNTs, of which the frequency is proportional to the inverse
diameter of SWNTs [10, 11]. The RBM spectra for rare gases are essentiallyindependent of the gas and the pressure. As mentioned in Sec. 2, the gas flow rate wasadjusted to a constant value to avoid variation in the temperature gradient inside thefurnace that influences the diameter distribution of SWNTs [5,6]. Figure 3 shows hardly
any change in the diameter distribution of SWNTs in all ambient gases and at allpressures (except for N2). This suggests that the molecular mass of rare gas is
inessential for controlling the diameter distribution of SWNTs. Moreover, the gaspressure does not influence their diameter distribution. For N2, however, the RBM peaks
show blue shifts of 20 cm-1 from those of rare gases. According to a simple relationshipbetween the RBM frequency and the diameter of SWNTs [11], a shift of 20cm-1
corresponds to a decrease of 0.2 nm in the diameter distribution. This change can beachieved for rare gas if the furnace temperature is lowered by 50 °C [5].
The reason why only the SWNTs grown in N2 was thinner than the others is probably
related to the fact that only N2 is a diatomic molecule and its vibrational degree of
freedom affects the cooling process of vaporized carbon by collision. Actually,
spontaneous emission from vaporized carbon clusters observed with a high-speed video
camera indicates that black body radiation from high-temperature carbon particles in N2
atmosphere fades out more quickly than in Ar [12, 13]. This strongly suggests that N2

4

gas cools carbon vapor more effectively than rare gases. The mean diameter of SWNTs
is known to become thinner as the ambient temperature is lowered [5]. Thus anadditional cooling process due to an extra internal freedom in a diatomic gas may lower
the effective growth temperature of SWNT by about 50 °C compared with rare gases.
3.3. Optical absorption spectra of thin films including SWNTs
Since the energy gap of SWNT is widened as its diameter becomes thinner, adifference in the resonance effect should be taken into account in the use of Raman
intensity to study the abundances of SWNTs with different diameters [9]. Since nitrogengas was found to generate thinner SWNTs, we have measured optical absorption toconfirm its high purity. The spectra of soot synthesized in Ar and N2 at 1000 Torr are
shown in Fig. 4. Since the thickness of each film is unknown, the absorption intensity isnormalized at the highest absorption peak around 5 eV. A broad peak around 5eV
originates from the π-plasmon of amorphous carbon while that of SWNTs appears at
4.5 eV [9]. Soot prepared in Ar gas shows a broad peak at 4.8 eV (see Fig. 4), and thatin N2 at 4.5 eV with a shoulder at 5 eV. On the other hand, three peak structuresappearing in the infrared (IR) region are optical transitions between spikes in the densityof states due to 1D-van Hove singularities in SWNTs. The N2 sample shows more
intense IR absorption peaks than the Ar sample. These spectral features apparently
indicate that carbons in the N2 sample are less amorphous than in Ar. Furthermore, thepeak positions for the IR absorption for the N2 sample are slightly higher. This finding is
consistent with the conclusion derived from the Raman analysis that nitrogen produces
thinner SWNTs than argon.
4. Summary
We have used neon, argon, nitrogen and krypton as ambient gases for laser ablation to
see the role of the ambient gas. Raman spectra, SEM, TEM and optical absorption
spectra indicate systematic changes in the abundances of SWNTs as a function ofmolecular mass and the pressure of the ambient gas. The highest purity of synthesized
SWNTs has been obtained with nitrogen at 1000 Torr, where the Raman intensity is 1.8
times as high as that with argon at 500 Torr. Moreover, only nitrogen gas is found to
produce SWNTs thinner than others by about 0.2 nm. A higher cooling rate in thenitrogen gas, probably due to the additional cooling by the vibrational degree of
freedom, may cause a smaller precursor of SWNTs.
The results obtained in the present work indicate that the pressure and the molecularmass of the ambient gas are not sensitive parameters to control the mean diameter5

distribution of SWNTs obtained by laser ablation. However, they are found to beimportant parameters for achieving higher abundance of SWNTs in soot generated bythis method. The highest abundance of SWNTs has been obtained with N2 at 1000 Torr.
Still higher abundance with controlled diameter distribution may be achieved by asimilar laser vaporization procedure in a mixed gas phase, where the effect of molecularmass can be optimized.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Y. Misaki for TEM observation. This work was supported inpart by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) No. 13304026 by the Ministry of
Education, Science, Sports, Culture and Technology of Japan, and in part by the
research project from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. K.T and Y. Ao.
acknowledge the financial support from Industrial Technology Research Grant in 2001
from New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of
Japan, and a Grant-in-Aid by Japan Society of the Promotion of Science.

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Figure captions
Fig. 1. (a) Typical Raman spectra of soot produced by laser ablation excited by 488 nm
Ar+ laser. A dotted curve indicates a spectrum of the soot produced in 300 Torr Ar, and asolid curve in 1000 Torr N2. To see details of the D-band parts, the spectra are magnified
vertically and one shifted upward. For relative estimation of the purity of SWNTs, all
Raman spectra were recorded under the same setup. (b) Integrated intensity of the
G-band (from 1470 to 1670 cm-1) as a function of the ambient gas pressure in Ne (opencircles), Ar (solid triangles), Kr (solid squares), and N2 (solid circles).
Fig. 2. Typical SEM images of soot produced in 1000 Torr (a) N2, (b) Ar, (c) Ne, and(d) Kr gases.
Fig. 3. Low-frequency Raman spectra of (a) soot synthesized in Ar (thick solid), Ne(dotted) and Kr (thin solid); (b) soot synthesized in Ar (solid) and in N2 (dotted).
Fig. 4. Optical absorption spectra of thin films of soot. Upper spectra show sootproduced in 1000 Torr Ar (dotted) and N2 (solid). Lower spectra are purified SWNTs(solid) and amorphous carbon (dotted) as references.

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Figure 1, Nishide et al.

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Figure 2

Nishide et al.

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Figure 3, Nishide et al.

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Figure 4, Nishide et al.

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