Decelerating Growth of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Arrays: Kinetic Controlled or Diffusion Controlled?

Feedstock and byproduct diffusion in the root growth of aligned CNT arrays was discussed in this work. A non-dimensional modulus was proposed to differentiate catalyst-decay controlled growth deceleration from diffusion controlled one. It was found that aligned MWNT arrays are usually free of feedstock diffusion while SWNT arrays are usually facing strong diffusion limit. The present method can also be utilized to predict the maximum length that CNT forest can grow in certain CVD process.