Growth of carbon nanostructure arrays on nickel electroplated copper substrate
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Date
2016-09-01
Authors
Roszaini Md Salle
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Abstract
Since the inventions of CNTs by Iijima in 1991, carbon nanostructure (CNS)
in which consists of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and carbon nanofibers (CNFs) has
great attentions among researchers due to the extraordinary properties of this
material. A lot of research activities and new findings regarding the potentials of
CNS were explored from time to time. One of the potential CNS is it can be used as
thermal interface material (TIM) and applied in electronic devices due to high
thermal conductivity of this material. Thus, this research is focusing on the synthesis
of high quality and density of CNS directly on the platform at low growth
temperature towards the potential of CNS for future application as TIM. The first
part of this study was the preparation of the heat spreader by electroplating method
prior to the growth CNS. Electroplating method was used to coat active metal
catalyst, nickel to the copper as substrate and copper was selected as the substrate
due to high thermal conductivity of this material whereas nickel is used as the metal
due to the ability to grow higher density of CNS and corrosion resistant. Two
parameters were studied in this part which was current density (1-30 mA/cm2) and
plating time (10 min-60 min). The samples were characterized using Scanning
Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX), X-ray Fluorescence
(XRF) and Atomic force Microscopy (AFM). For the second part of this study is the
growth of CNS via Catalytic Chemical Vapour Deposition (CCVD) where acetylene
was used carbon precursor instead of methane. Three parameters were studied for
this part, reaction temperature (400 ℃ - 800 ℃), flow rate of acetylene (10-30 sccm)
and reaction time (5-40 min). All CNS growth were characterized using SEM, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and
Raman Spectroscopy. From both part, the performance of nickel plated catalyst on
the copper substrate towards the growth of high density and high quality CNS is
optimum on nickel plated catalyst that contains smaller grain size, thin, fully covered
and high uniformity which is 1 mA/cm2. A direct growth of CNS was successfully
performed on nickel plated catalyst at low growth temperature where the optimum
CCVD condition for the growth of high quality and high density of CNS was at
reaction temperature of 600 ℃, 40 min reaction time and 30 to 100 sccm flowrate of
acetylene to nitrogen.