A Facile Method for Self-Organized Texturing of Iron-Filled Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Arrays

A facile chemical vapor deposition-based method for the texturing of substrate-supported iron-filled multiwalled carbon nanotube arrays is reported. The method is based on the interplay of temperature gradients and modulated vapor flow that produces annular height variation and a vertical-array-to-spherulitic morphological transformation in experimental conditions, which result in uniform, close-packed arrays of constant height in an unmodulated vapor flow. These observations are proposed to result from creation of stationary cells of feedstock vapor above the growth front.