Selective growth of carbon nanostructures on nickel implanted nanopyramid array

Abstract Carbon nanostructures (CN) have been selectively grown directly onto the top of nickel ion implanted nanopyramid array (Ni NPA) by the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (p-CVD) technique. Firstly, NPA were fabricated by taking advantage of the anisotropic etching characteristics of silicon in hydrazine (N 2 H 4 H 2 O); where the ion implanted area acted as a mask for hydrazine etching. Secondly, carbon nanostructures were grown on Ni NPA by feeding methane/hydrogen (CH 4 /H 2 ) mixtures into p-CVD reactor. The change of concentration ratio of methane to hydrogen dramatically affected the growth selectivity of CN. Methane concentrations lower than 20%, promoted the selective growth of CN on the top of Ni NPA. Morphology and chemical nature of grown species were studied by employing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, respectively.