Carbon nanotubes grown on sputtered copper islands using atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition for biosensor applications

Abstract

As-deposited copper on silicon wafer by sputtering and subsequent thermal annealing at atmospheric pressure enables the formation of copper islands. Dewetting of copper catalyst by annealing promotes the growth of self-assembly carbon nanotubes (CNT) on the copper islands. A few nanometers sputtered copper thin film was annealed with the presence of argan gas in vacuum-less chamber under 1000$^{\circ}C$ to promote the dewetting process of copper thin film. $40 cm^{3}$/min of methane gas was supplied inside the chamber to grow the CNT. Due to this fabrication simplicity with the potential for mass production, dewetting technique was chosen compared to other preparation of catalyst nanoparticles method. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron (FESEM) were done to study the morphology of the sample. Raman analysis was done to identify the quality of CNT with the presence of D,G, G’ and D peaks. The current obtained in the measurement was 55.3 $\mu A$ in DC mode. Thus, CNT has garnered much attention as one of the most potential building blocks for high sensitivity and rapid detection sensing system.