Abstract
In this study, we used vertical floating catalyst method to produce single-walled carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes were synthesized by pyrolyzing the vapor of carbon source mixed with sublimed metal catalysts at high temperature. After studying a series of experiment parameters, high purity single-walled carbon nanotubes with the production rate of 40~200 mg per ten minutes could be achieved. On the other hand, we progressively equipped the collector and rotator at the bottom of the thermal furnace in order to collect the grown single-walled carbon nanotubes effectively. In this work, the horizontal and the vertical rotators were tested. We found that the collection by the vertical rotator was far superior than that by the horizontal rotator, and single-walled carbon nanotubes were indeed spun on the rotator. The variation of structure and quality of carbon nanotubes collected by different rotators were also discussed. In an occasional condition, we found long CNTs bundles (about 30 cm) spun on the rotator. We took the CNTs bundles to hang an object simply, and the result showed that carbon nanotubes could really hang the object which was much heavier than themselves. The structure of long CNTs bundles will possess notable potential on the further application of the steel rope and related composite materials.