Abstract Submitted to the    NANOTUBE'04 Conference:

Single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have been exposed to fluorinated plasma mixtures in a standard reactive ion etching (RIE) system. The nature of the fluorination of SWNTs has been investigated using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The mechanism of the fluorine attachment has been studied using Langmuir probe and optical emission spectroscopy (OES). It is observed that the different plasma parameters influence the nature of fluorination of the SWNTs, which is determined by XPS with emphasis on the F1s peaks. It is believed that the mechanism of the fluorine attachment is dependent upon both the ions incident to the SWNTs and the radical concentrations within the plasma. Raman spectroscopy and TEM have shown that the tube structure has not been broken by the ion bombardment and XPS studies have confirmed that limiting stochiometries of the fluorination have not been reached. The versatility of us ing fluorinated plasma to accurately control the behaviour of the SWNTs will be discussed.