Scientists Grow Carbon Nanomustaches

Posted on May 16, 2013

An international team of researchers from the University of Vienna (Austria), the University of Surrey (UK) and the IFW Dresden (Germany) have grown carbon nanomustaches. The idea of nanomustaches is odd, but scientists say the knowledge gained from understanding the growth of the nanomustaches could provide a basis for the controlled production of advanced carbon materials with designed geometries.

The scientists pressurized a gas consisting of carbon and iron atoms at an elevated temperature until two arms of carbon atoms spontaneously started growing out of an iron core. When the iron core was small enough, the two carbon arms started spiraling at their ends so that the whole nanostructure resembled a twirled moustache.

Dr. Hidetsugu Shiozawa, lead author of the paper and researcher at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna, said in a statement, "The encouraging insights we gained from our experiments provide a very good starting point for the controlled production of extraordinary new materials with designed nanostructures."

The researchers cut their nanomaterial into extremely thin slices and used transmission electron microscopy to get a closer look at the slices. The distribution of the structural imperfections allowed the scientists to look back in time and extract further information about the formation of the nanomaterial. The scientists want to understand even more about the mechanism behind the formation pattern of the nanomoustaches and plan to grow more dimensional and more complex nanostructures in future experiments.

The research was published here in the journal, Scientific Reports.


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