Nanomanufacturing of carbon materials; from nucleation to nanoscale devices

Scaling up the synthesis of carbon materials is often intertwined with the complex issues of quality, cost, mechanical reliability and performance. This presentation, will touch upon a few fundamental challenges involved in large scale manufacturing of carbon materials, namely carbon nanotubes, graphene and electron beam induced deposition of carbon nanostructures towards electronic and energy device applications. Controlled growth of aligned CNTs will be demonstrated with the mechanistic understanding of nuceation, growth kinetics by systematic experiments conducted via insitu TEM and thermal CVD. Further, graphene growth on variety of substrates including insuating substates will be also discussed along with the possibility of scaling up the graphene synthesis via roll to roll CVD process. In addition to controlled CVD growth, several approaches such as electron beam patterning, direct ball pen writing on soft substrates and fabrication of carbon reinforced nanocomposites will be presented. In particular, large area growth of carbon nanostructures with control over uniform coverage, patterning ability, surface chemistry and defects with future prospects for improvements will be discussed. (author)