Characterization of carbon nanotubes and carbon nitride nanofibres synthesized by PECVD

This paper presents a novel dual plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process developed to grow carbon nitride nanofibres (CN-NFs) at room temperature (RT) and its basic version used to grow multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) at temperatures as low as 550 ◦ C. The dual process alternates two low pressure-high density plasmas, one inductively coupled (ICP) and the other one excited by distributed electron cyclotron resonance (DECR). MWCNTs can be synthesized using only the DECR plasma source. The paper focuses on the comparison between CN-NFs and MWCNTs detailing their structure as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photo electron spectroscopy (XPS) and Raman spectroscopy.