Publications in Scientific Journals:
S. Esconjauregui, C. Cepek, M. Fouquet, B. C. Bayer, A. Gamalski, B. Chen, R. Xie, S. Bhardwaj, C. Ducati, S. Hofmann, J. Robertson:
"Plasma stabilisation of metallic nanoparticles on silicon for the growth of carbon nanotubes";
Journal of Applied Physics,
112
(2012),
034303.
German abstract:
Ammonia (NH3) plasma pretreatment is used to form and temporarily reduce the mobility of Ni, Co, or Fe nanoparticles on boron-doped mono- and poly-crystalline silicon. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy proves that NH3 plasma nitrides the Si supports during nanoparticle formation which prevents excessive nanoparticle sintering/diffusion into the bulk of Si during carbon nanotube growth by chemical vapour deposition. The nitridation of Si thus leads to nanotube vertical alignment and the growth of nanotube forests by root growth mechanism.
"Official" electronic version of the publication (accessed through its Digital Object Identifier - DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4740468