Solid supported ruthenium catalyst for growing single-walled carbon nanotubes with narrow chirality distribution

The past two decades witnessed the thriving of non-conventional nanoparticles in catalytic synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). However, most of the SWNTs are limited to growing on a flat surface which usually suffers low output, thus making the evaluation of SWNT chirality distribution challenging. In this work, we report a solid magnesia (MgO) supported ruthenium (Ru) catalyst for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of SWNTs with sufficient quantity for optical characterizations. Both MgO supported atomically dispersed Ru catalyst and Ru nanoparticles pre-deposited onto porous MgO are active for catalytic synthesis of small diameter SWNTs. Particularly, enriched (6, 5) SWNTs are achieved at temperatures higher than 800 °C by CO CVD, which is partially attributed to the high activity of Ru clusters. Besides, density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the charge transfer from the MgO support to the Ru clusters promotes the carbon precursor absorption and dissociation, accounting for the activation of Ru clusters. This work not only demonstrates the application of atomically dispersed catalyst for CVD growth of SWNTs, but also paves the way for the chirality-selective growth of SWNTs from non-magnetic nanoparticles.