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Updated: May 16, 2026

Simultaneous Synthesis of Single-walled Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene in a Magnetically-enhanced Arc Plasma
Published on: February 2, 2012
Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy observation of sub-nano-sized molybdenum carbide crystals in carbon
Ryusuke Sagawa1, Kosuke Kurushima, Yuji Otsuka
1Department of Material and Life Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. sagawa@atom.mls.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
Cross-sectional observation of molybdenum carbide nanocrystals inside carbon nanotubes was successfully conducted in this study. The nanocrystals were generated by irradiating as-synthesized encapsulated molybdenum oxide crystals with an intense electron beam; the most probable composition of the crystals was determined to be α-MoC1-x by electron diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Thinning processes using a focused ion beam and an Ar-ion mill enabled cross-sectional observations along the tube axis. As a result, it became clear that the molybdenum carbide crystals show translational symmetry with a parallelogram configuration having preferred {111} facets when observed from the [110] direction, despite the sub-nanometer order of the crystals.

