PECVD growth of carbon nanotubes

We report on the growth of carbon nanotubes by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). We used acetylene and ammonia gas mixtures with a process pressure of I Torr for the growth of carbon nanotubes on nickel layers. The metal catalyst, just a few nanometers thick, was patterned on oxidized silicon substrates by electron beam lithography. Our aim was to develop a cheap mass production method to grow high quality, aligned carbon nanotubes. We used different plasma setups and scanned individual growth parameters in order to achieve that goal. In this work, we compare the different results obtained by direct current (DC) plasma deposition.