Kinetics of reactive ion etching upon single-walled carbon nanotubes

The remarkable etching reaction of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) has been observed in their growth of the parameter-controlled plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The time evolution study of the SWNTs growth leads to establishing a growth equation which can completely express the growth kinetics of SWNTs in the plasma CVD. The growth equation is found to reveal that there are several key parameters which directly affect the etching reaction of SWNTs. Furthermore, such kinetics of the SWNT etching in plasmas can perfectly be explained with a reactive ion etching model.