Surface modifications on carbon nanotubes:

ozone/plasma functionalized and ZnO

covered.

Jesus Aguilar , Leonardo Lara , Hugo Borbon , Hugo Tiznado

1,* 1,* 2 3
1
.
Centro de Investigación Ciéntifica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, 2 CONACyT-Centro de Nanociencias Y Nanotecnología 3 Centro
de Nanociencias Y Nanotecnología.
* Corresponding autor: manueljm@cicese.edu.mx/larald@cicese.edu.mx.

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNT's) have been of great interest in the scientific field due to their mechanical, electrical, optical and chemical properties, in addition to
the applications they have in electronics, photonics and biotechnology that are attractive to the industrial sector. The high superficial area that the nanotubes
have can be exploited to be functionalized or coated with a totally new material expanding the possibilities of incorporating these nanomaterials in current
devices or create new ones. In the current work, carbon nanotubes were grown by spray pyrolysis of toluene as precursor; carbon surface was modified by
plasma/ozone atmosphere or coated carried out by atomic layer deposition of ZnO, followed by characterizations that corroborate the effectiveness of the
method used.

Synthesis Functionalization

Scheme of Ozone generator by UV light source.

Coating method a) b) c)

O2 Plasma chamber.

FTIR
1600.- C=C

2850.- C-H
Conclusions
2920.- C-H

3450.- O-H
FTIR spectra of (A) Plasma, (B)
Ozone-functionalized CNTs, and
(C) unmodified CNTs.
TEM
Carbon nanotubes were synthetized by spray pyrolysis technique, functionalized
with plasma/ozone atmosphere and coated with ZnO via ALD. The data provided
for the FTIR spectra gives us information about the stretch bonds present in the
functionalized samples, OH bond are present in the functionalized samples. TEM
images clearly shows CNTs coated with ZnO. With the methods described, surface
modification of carbon nanotubes can be successfully done, nevertheless further
studies are required to conclude about the effectiveness of the methods.

TEM images of carbon nanotubes coated with ZnO.
Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal
Académico DGAPA-UNAM - by, through research projects: PAPIIT IN 112117, IA
101018, IN 110018 and IA 103117, PAPIME PE100318, PE101317, PE210219 and
FORDECYT - CONACYT 272894. Authors would like to thank valuable support by
Fernando Solorio.