Suspended heated silicon platform for rapid thermal control of surface reactions with application to carbon nanotube synthesis

Lucas van Laake, Anastasios John Hart, Alexander H. Slocum

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25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Rapid continuous thermal control of chemical reactions such as those for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of nanotubes and nanowires cannot be studied using traditional reactors such as tube furnaces, which have large thermal masses. We present the design, modeling, and verification of a simple, low-cost reactor based on resistive heating of a suspended silicon platform. This system achieves slew rates exceeding 100 °Cs, enabling studies of rapid heating and thermal cycling. Moreover, the reaction surface is available for optical monitoring. A first-generation CVD apparatus encapsulates the heated silicon platform inside a sealed quartz tube, and initial experiments demonstrate growth of films of tangled single-wall and aligned multiwall carbon nanotubes using this system. The reactor can be straightforwardly scaled to larger or smaller substrate sizes and may be extended for a wide variety of reactions, for performing in situ reaction diagnostics, for chip-scale growth of nanostructures, and for rapid thermal processing of microelectronic and micromechanical devices.

Original languageEnglish
Article number083901
JournalReview of Scientific Instruments
Volume78
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was funded by NSF Grant No. DMI-0521985 and by an Ignition Grant from the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. One of the authors (A.J.H.) is grateful for a Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowship. The authors thank M. P. Brenner of Harvard University for discussions regarding the thermal model.

Funding

This work was funded by NSF Grant No. DMI-0521985 and by an Ignition Grant from the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. One of the authors (A.J.H.) is grateful for a Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowship. The authors thank M. P. Brenner of Harvard University for discussions regarding the thermal model.

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