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Microplasmas can be used for a wide range of technological applications and to improve the understanding of fundamental physics. Scanning electron microscopy, on the other hand, provides insights into the sample morphology and chemistry of materials from the mm‐ down to the nm‐scale. Combining both would provide direct insight into plasma‐sample interactions in real‐time and at high spatial resolution. Up till now, very few attempts in this direction have been made, and significant challenges remain. This work presents a stable direct current glow discharge microplasma setup built inside a scanning electron microscope. The experimental setup is capable of real‐time in situ imaging of the sample evolution during plasma operation and it demonstrates localized sputtering and sample oxidation. Further, the experimental parameters such as varying gas mixtures, electrode polarity, and field strength are explored and experimental V–I curves under various conditions are provided. These results demonstrate the capabilities of this setup in potential investigations of plasma physics, plasma‐surface interactions, and materials science and its practical applications. The presented setup shows the potential to have several technological applications, for example, to locally modify the sample surface (e.g., local oxidation and ion implantation for nanotechnology applications) on the µm‐scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substrates pretreatment in suspensions of a detonation nanodiamond is widely used for nucleation of diamond growth by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). We found that iron inclusions in the nanodiamond provide catalytical growth of carbon nanotubes during CVD in a hot filament reactor (HF CVD). Carbon nanotubes grow in the area between two adjacent Si wafers. The diameters of such obtained nanotubes were in the range of 10–100 nm and the length of the tubes reaches about 10 µm. The proposed HF CVD method has convincing potential for the fabrication of carbon nanotube coatings on a large surface area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of active component of Fe–Mo and Co–Mo catalysts for carbon nanotube growth with variable Mo content is studied with in situ XRD, XPS, and STEM&EDX. The activation of bimetallic Fe–Mo catalysts under the growth conditions leads to the formation of Fe–Mo alloy particles in contrast to Co‐containing catalysts in which active alloy incorporates only a small portion of Mo (<2–3 at.%). The stable carbide formation for these systems is not detected. The effect of Mo content in Fe–Mo and Co–Mo catalysts on the properties of MWCNTs is additionally investigated using the Raman spectroscopy in combination with measurements of the temperature dependence of conductivity. It is shown that MWCNT defectiveness depends on the active component composition for both Fe–Mo and Co–Mo catalysts. The current carrier concentration for the MWCNTs grown on Fe–Mo catalysts slightly increases with the Mo content. The opposite effect is observed for the tubes grown on Co–Mo catalysts, showing a decrease in the current carrier concentration with the increase of Mo concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The synthesis of graphene on thin copper film deposited on quartz substrate is reported. The copper films are fabricated with different thickness of 300 and 1150 nm and then crystallized during thermal annealing that occurs at temperature of 950 and 1000 °C for 30 or 90 min. The size of copper grains increases with increasing of the temperature and the time of annealing that results in increasing of graphene film size. The deposited copper films are studied by electron backscatter diffraction and synthesized graphene films are analyzed by Raman spectroscopy and scanning probe microscopy. Proposed phase contrast mode of the scanning probe microscopy demonstrates high lateral resolution and sensitivity to the presence of graphene with different number of layers. It is found that graphene monolayer is preferably formed on the surface of copper grains with orientation {111} and proposed techniques can be used for the analysis of the evolution of graphene growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the analysis of the intensity of diamond line in the Raman spectra of laser modified layers with different thickness on a diamond surface. Since the diamond line passing from substrate through the absorbing layer of moderate thickness can be registered, the thickness of local area is estimated from its micro‐Raman spectra. The comparison between Raman scattering and direct observation of the graphitized layer by transmission electron microscopy shows that Raman spectroscopy can be used as an alternative non‐destructive method for measuring a moderate thickness of graphitized layers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]