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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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.
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