Strong magnetic field-assisted growth of carbon nanofibers and its microstructural transformation mechanism

It is well-known that electric and magnetic fields can control the growth direction, morphology and microstructure of one-dimensional carbon nanomaterials (1-DCNMs), which plays a key role for its potential applications in micro-nano-electrics and devices. In this paper, we introduce a novel process for controlling growth of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) with assistance of a strong magnetic field (up to 0.5 T in the center) in a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system. The results reveal that: 1) The CNFs get bundled when grown in the presence of a strong magnetic field and slightly get aligned parallel to the direction of the magnetic field; 2) The CNFs diameter become narrowed and homogenized with increase of the magnetic field; 3) With the increase of the magnetic field, the microstructure of CNFs is gradually changed, i.e., the strong magnetic field makes the disordered “solid-cored” CNFs transform into a kind of bamboo-liked carbon nanotubes; 4) We propose a mechanism that the reason for these variations and transformation is due to diamagnetic property of carbon atoms, so that it has direction selectivity in the precipitation process.