New laser ablation chamber for producing carbon nanomaterials using excimer laser

Carbon nanomaterials have been obtained using an innovative laser ablation chamber design. The chamber has several improvements of the design including a longer oven and a longer cold finger as compared to other designs. The laser employed in these experiments has been a KrF excimer laser. The chamber has been successfully used for obtaining nano-onions and single walled carbon nanotubes by laser ablation. A novel target preparation method has been developed and employed to incorporate metal catalysts without the need of pressing or hot pressing of the targets. The ablation products, obtained using this new chamber design, have been investigated by transmission electron microscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy, as well as thermogravimetric analysis measurements.