Growth and characterization of TiC nanorods activated by nickel nanoparticles

We report a new method for the synthesis of metallic TiC nanorods by using chemical vapor deposition on mesoporous active carbon embedded with Ni nanoparticles inside the pores. In this process, mesoporous active carbon was used as the source of carbon material, and as a template to generate nanosized catalysts that greatly affect the size of the rods. The vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth mechanism may be responsible for the nanorod formation. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that the resultant nanorods were uniformly several micrometers in length and about 20-70nm in diameter. High-resolution TEM and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) revealled that the TiC nanorods were single crystals with the preferred growth direction [001]. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.