Preparation of Ultrafine Carbon Tubes in Nanochannels of an Anodic Aluminum Oxide Film

纳米级碳管被认为是一种新型的碳材料。具体地说，填充金属的碳纳米管可能会有各种工业应用。因此，这种填充纳米管的制备和应用正成为一个非常具有挑战性的研究课题。到目前为止，碳纳米管的制备主要是使用弧光放电蒸发技术，并曾多次尝试将金属插入到由弧光放电蒸发技术制备的管中。在本研究中，我们利用模板碳化技术，以一种具有平行和直线通道阵列的氧化铝薄膜为原料，制备了直径为纳米级的碳纳米管。我们的碳化方法最显著的特点是可以生产出长度、直径和厚度均匀的单分散碳纳米管。此外，通过应用模板技术，我们成功地制备了铂金属填充的均匀碳纳米管，其中金属以纳米棒或纳米粒子的形式存在。应该注意的是，在管子的外壁上没有观察到铂金属。

Carbon tubes of nanometer level have now been characterized as a new carbon material. Specifically, metal-filled carbon nanotubes could have a variety of industrial applications. Thus the preparation and application of such filled nanotubes are now becoming a very challenging research. Carbon nanotubes have been prepared thus far mainly using an arc-discharge evaporation technique and there have been several attempts to insertmetal into the tubes prepared by the arc-discharge evaporation technique. In this research, We have prepared carbon nanotubes by template carbonization technique using an anodic aluminum oxide film, which has an array of parallel and straight channels with a diameter of nanometer level. The most striking feature of our carbonization method is to allow one to produce monodisperse carbon nanotubes with uniform length, diameter and thickness. Furthermore, by applying the template technique, we have succeeded in preparing Pt metal-filled uniform carbon nanotubes in which the metal is present as either nanorods or nanoparticles. It should be noted that no Pt metal was observed on the outside wall of the tubes.