Carbon Nanotube Graphoepitaxy: Highly Oriented Growth by Faceted Nanosteps

Abstract

Single-wall carbon nanotubes grow along self-assembled nanosteps of annealed miscut C-plane sapphire. Depending on the miscut orientation and annealing conditions, graphoepitaxy leads to the formation of either unprecedentedly straight and parallel nanotubes, with angular deviations as small as +/-0.5 degrees , or to wavy nanotubes loosely conformal to sawtooth-shaped faceted nanosteps.