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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
We report a successful demonstration of a position control technique for carbon nanotube growth catalyzed by an iron nano-dot array, which was fabricated by using electron beam induced chemical vapor deposition (EB-CVD). Point irradiation of an electron beam with ferrocene source gas produced an amorphous carbon dot containing iron atoms that were uniformly dispersed into each dot, and its position could be precisely controlled. Vacuum annealing of the ferrocene based dots induced segregation of iron nano-particles, whose size was almost proportional to the beam irradiation time. After removing the carbon residue, an ethanol CVD process carried out at 800°C under 40 mmHg of ethanol vapor induced carbon nanotube growth from the dots. Many grown nanotubes were very thin, being 0.7 to 1.8 nm in diameter. These diameters were much less than that of the bottom iron particles.