GISAXS study of carbon nanotubes grown by CVD

We report a quantitative Grazing Incidence Small Angle X‐ray Scattering (GISAXS) study of a dense film of mutually oriented carbon nanotubes (CNTs) grown by a catalytically‐activated DC HF CCVD process after dispersion of metallic catalytic (Co) islands on SiO2/Si(100) substrates. The GISAXS pattern analysis is expanded to non‐correlated surface science systems and is based on CNTs density, characteristic lengths, atomic Co dispersion throughout the CNTs and roughnesses of uncorrelated particles. The results are closely compared to SEM and TEM observations. The GISAXS patterns, even dominated by envelope features of disordered objects, provide significant complementary quantitative data about CNTs films. The results underline that cobalt continuously fills the nanotube in the course of the growth and that the CNTs experience a large tendency toward mutual alignment. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) Grazing incidence small angle X‐ray scattering (GISAXS) has been used to probe the mutual alignment of non‐correlated carbon nanotubes grown by a catalytically enhanced CVD process. The patterns could successfully be reproduced using the effective layer Born approximation and the distorted wave Born approximation including the Parratt recursive formalism, extending this technique to non‐correlated and multilayered structures.