Kinetics of Carbon nano-tubes.

As there are no mathematical models to model the growth rate of carbon nanotubes. And here
we are proposing one partial mathematical model for carbon nano-tubes growth. To calculate the
growth rate of carbon nano-tubes it must be known that how many carbon atoms are available and how
many are participating in the activity of carbon nano-tube growth. We need to know about the
necessary parameters like temperature,pressure, number of walls and linear growth rate for forming
carbon nano-tubes. The area growth rate of carbon nanotube is calculated by
N

Area growth rate

2 rn E
A=
n=1

A is area growth rate , r n is the nth wall radius , E is length growth rate and N is number of

where
walls.
r n = r 1 + x (n1) , x factor depends on temperature , pressure and catalytic particle diameter.
After summing the above equation we get the expression as follows

A=(2
r 1 + x (N1)) N E , where r 1 is inner most wall radius
But the growth rate is a stochastic process, so the two-dimensional observed growth rate can be further
extended to three dimensional growth rate via factor of E .
4

A=(2r
1 +x(N1)) N E xy 4

The above equation which obtained after correction is multiplied by the graphitic areal density of

Assume we have an ideal gas of flux f , of carbon precursor gas molecules due to random thermal
motion
1
f = n c
4
NAP
and it it per
RT
unit volume, c is the average speed of carbon precursor gas molecules and it is given by kinetic
8 RT 12
theory of gases c =(
) , N A is Avogadro's number.
M
The number of carbon atoms being processed every second would be the flux times the accessible area
of the catalyst particle. The size and shape of the catalyst particle can be obtained directly from high
resolution images in the case of tip growth and sometimes also in the case of the root growth.
where n is the number of density of carbon precursor gas molecules given by n=

The ratio, F , of the number of carbon atoms used in the growth of the nano-tube versus the number of
carbon atoms that nominally arrive on a clean unobstructed side of the catalyst particle of
hemispherical area, 2 r 1 2 , will provide a rough measure of the efficiency of the nano-tube growth
process. This ratio F is
F=

1 [2 r 1 + x ( N1)] N 1
2 MRT
2

2
NA P
r1

P
.
T
Only fraction of carbon precursor gas molecules decompose to produce carbon atoms.
Different catalyst particles may have different activities for CNT formation.
The arrival rate of carbon precursor gas molecules is proportional to