Carbon nanotubes grafted on silicon oxide nanowires

In this article, we report the grafting of multi-walled carbon nanotubes on silica nanowires by directly growing nanotubes on the surfaces of the nanowires via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using ferrocene and xylene as Fe catalyst precursor and carbon source, respectively. The grafted carbon nanotubes are a few micrometers long with diameters of 10 to approximately 30 nm, and grow uniformly along the lengths of the nanowires. The distribution density of the grafted carbon nanotubes on the silica nanowires can be tuned by simply adjusting the CVD growth temperature. Our method provides a simple approach for synthesizing nanometer scale grafted heterostructures between nanotubes and nanowires, which could be used to design and construct high-performance filters, chemical sensors and reinforced composites.