Nickel Particle Coatings by Electroless Plating onto Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) have recently emerged as a material with outstanding properties. It has shown promising potential for applications in many engineering fields as electronic devices, thermal conductors, and light-weight composites. Researchers have investigated their use as reinforcements in themetal matrix composites of CNTs. In the present work, we decorated CNTs with Ni particles by electroless plating. The CNTs were wet-ball milled for various milling times with a nickel sulfate solution. The precipitated Ni particles were observed mainly by FESEM. In this study, the dispersion of the CNTs and Ni particles was improved with the addition of the surfactant. Also, as the CNTs were shortened and widened by an increased ball milling time, the size of the precipitated Ni particles increased. It was estimated that the CNTs were deformed and caused some defects on their surface during the ball milling process. Those defects were assumed to be heterogeneous nucleation sites for the Ni particles.