Water-assisted fabrication of aligned microsized carbon tubes made of self-assembled multi-wall carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Aligned micro-sized carbon tubes have been successfully synthesized on silicon substrate by pyrolysis of cyclohexane/ferrocene in the presence of water, a spectacular feature of which is that the multi-wall carbon nanotubes formed in situ act as the basic building blocks for the construction of micro-tubes via a “multi-scale” self-assembly process.