Synthesis of carbon nanofibers by ethanol catalytic combustion technique

A general, simple and economic synthetic method for synthesizing carbon nanofibers was presented. In the method, ethanol was employed as carbon source; metal salts such as nickel nitrate, ferric nitrate and ferric chloride were used as catalyst precursor respectively; copper plate was employed as the support material. A lot of products were obtained by catalytic combustion deposition of ethanol vapor. Then the as-prepared carbon nanofibers were characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, energy dispersion X-ray spectroscopy and selected-area electron diffractometry. By analyzing the results of characterization, the conclusions are as follows: 1) the large catalyst particles tend to formlarge-diameter CNFs, small catalyst particles are inclinable to form small-diameter CNFs; 2) the morphology of the catalyst can affect the final morphology of the CNFs. Moreover, the possible growth mechanisms were proposed and the degree of graphitization of samples was estimated by Raman spectroscopy characterization.