Aligned CNT's have been grown at IMEC's Nanofab.

Thermal-only processes tend to produce non-aligned nanotubes.
Plasma growth processes produce thicker carbon fibres.
Plasma catalyst activation and thermal growth can produce very dense aligned CNT growth.

 With the Ti/ Fe catalyst plasma pretreatment and
thermal growth leads to vertical alignment !
(The optimum combination depends on the catalyst choice.
middle SEM with Co (nanoparticles ECD)/TiN as the catalyst)

Thermal Growth of C Nanotubes in via holes (ca 350 nm diameter):
Good yield with straight growth at > 550 °

A high density of multi wall (MW)
Carbon Nanotubes can be obtained
with the Fe/ Ti catalyst and plasma
activation:

>>10¹¹ MW CNT / cm²
or 10¹²CNT shells / cm²

Equipment:
Plasmalab System 100
("Nanofab" )

Technology:
Parallel Plate Reactor
Shower Head Gas inlet

CNTs can be grown with or without plasma.
The plasma is also used to preclean the seed
layer and to clean the process chamber.

aligned growth rate > 40 nm/ min
random growth rate ca 300 nm/ min

PECVD and CVD technology

Plasmalab System 100
("Nanofab" )

with kind permission

IMEC
Daire Cott, Francesca Iacopi
Semiconductor Equipment Assessment collaboration with OPT
EC FP6 project IST-027982 SEA-NET