Preparation and characterization of catalyst mix Fe-Co/MgO for carbon nanotubes growth

Fe-Co/MgO is one of the most common catalyst mix applied to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) growth in chemical vapor deposition process. Therefore, here we present detailed study on the preparation and characterization of Fe-Co/MgO. The precursors of Fe and Co are iron (II) acetate and cobalt acetates, correspondingly. The molar ratio of the catalyst mix is Fe:Co:MgO=1:1:100. Initially, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) of the mixture was performed. TGA analysis of it indicated the stepwise mass losses which pointed out the crucial thermal conditions for the changes in the elemental composition, morphology, crystallographic structure and vibrational properties. In current state of the art the lowest growth temperature for singlewalled carbon nanotubes is 550°C in CVD technique and here the characterization of the catalyst mix strongly suggest that this temperature can be decreased what would enhance the compatibility of CNT growth with current complementary metal-oxide-silicon (CMOS) technology for CNTs-based nanoelectronics. The morphology, crystallographic structure, elemental composition of the samples and its spectroscopic properties were performed via high resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Infrared spectroscopy (IR), respectively.