Abstract Submitted to the    NANOTUBE'04 Conference:

Effects of catalysts on the synthesis of carbon nanotubes via the thermal chemical vapor deposition process were investigated. Bimetallic catalysts were co-deposited by a DC sputtering system on the thermal oxidized silicon substrates. After heating the as-deposited films at temperature between 700 and 900oC catalytic islands formed, and carbon nanotubes were synthesized when acetylene was adopted as the precursor . It is found that Fe was the most active catalyst to grow carbon nanotubes compared to Co and Ni. By adding second metal such as Al, Mo and Cr as co-catalyst, thin-walled carbon nanotubes with different diameters, densities and morophology were synthesized. We have optimized the thickness and the composition ratio of bimetallic layers to control the density of carbon nanotubes. In this study, the crystalline structure of the bimetallic catalysts is studied, and the influences of crystalline structure on CNTs growth are also investigated.