Abstract
The cost of the production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is one of the great challenges. Thermal spray pyrolysis is a simple and economic technique for synthesizing CNT's at low temperature. Fabrication and characterization of CNTs based thermal pyrolysis process are reported in this work. The precursors, the catalyst, and the carrier gas are all factors affect the cost of production. Coconut and olive oils are used as precursor, nickel chloride as a catalyst, argon as a carrier gas to produce CNTs on different substrate such as Al alloy, anodized Al and Si wafer operated at different temperatures ranged from 500 up to 700 °C. The concentration of nickel chloride was 5 wt%. The results reveal that the coconut oil producing graphene sheet while olive oils, has been found to be an effective precursor of CNTs than coconut oil. CNTs were prepared by catalytic decomposition of the oil over the metal particles dispersed and supported on the surface by spray pyrolysis method with a reaction time 5 min. The CNTs were characterized by FESEM (A field emission scanning electron microscope), TEM (transmission electron microscopy), XRD(X-ray diffraction) and Raman spectroscopy. Raman spectroscopy reveals that as-grown nanotubes are well graphitized with olive oil than coconut oil.