Production of carbon nanotubes using mechanical milling in the presence of an exothermic reaction

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have shown promising potential for many applications in field of engineering due to their unusual significant properties. A major challenge for the industrial applications of CNTs is the large-quantity production. In this field, one new method for CNT production is annealing the ball milled graphite powder. The annealing process should be done in high temperature (1200–1400 °C) and needs time more than 6 h. The novel process introduced in this paper is elimination the annealing stage thorough a thermite reaction. The necessity heat for the conversion of milling products to CNTs was generated in the milling chamber by an exothermic reaction. In addition, the reaction products acted as catalysts to the CNT formation process. The adiabatic temperatures of 1809, 2000 and 2325 K were selected according to balancing graphite and thermite mixture (Aluminum + Iron oxide powders) for exothermic reaction. The results of thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) test proved that CNT formation strongly depends on adiabatic temperature. The results of microscopic evaluation done by transition electron microscope (TEM) showed that at higher adiabatic temperature CNTs could be produced.