Short Communication: Room-Temperature Growth of Carbon Nanofibers From Iron-Encapsulated Dendritic Catalysts

Ordered carbonaceous growth typically requires high-energy methods such as arc discharge [1] or decomposition of hydrocarbon-based precursors using laser [2–4], plasma [3], or thermolytic techniques [4]. For the latter technique, temperature regimes on the order of 600–1000° C are most common, with a few recent reports citing lower temperatures using halogenated precursors [5–7], or through alkali-metal catalyzed transformation of bulk carbon allotropes [8,9]. Sailor etal. have reported the first growth of non-amorphous carbon deposits at room temperature [10]. However, their electrochemical synthesis did not produce nanostructural carbon; due to the absence of nanosized catalytic seeds, the diameters of their fibers were > 5μm, and contained copious amounts of Cl, H, N, and O impurities.