Plasma-enabled, catalyst-free growth of carbon nanotubes on mechanically-written Si features with arbitrary shape

Simple, rapid, catalyst-free synthesis of complex patterns of long, vertically aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes, strictly confined within mechanically-written features on a Si(100) surface is reported. It is shown that dense arrays of the nanotubes can nucleate and fully fill the features when the low-temperature microwave plasma is in a direct contact with the surface. This eliminates additional nanofabrication steps and inevitable contact losses in applications associated with carbon nanotube patterns. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.