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US 8,709,602 B2Granted
One-dimensional metal nanostructures
AssigneesGM Global Technology Operations LLC, The University of Western Ontario
InventorsXueliang Sun, Ruying Li, Yuqin Zhou, Mei Cai, Hao Liu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Tin powder is heated in a flowing stream of an inert gas, such as argon, containing a small concentration of carbon-containing gas, at a temperature to produce metal vapor. The tin deposits as liquid on a substrate, and reacts with the carbon-containing gas to form carbon nanotubes in the liquid tin. Upon cooling and solidification, a composite of tin nanowires bearing coatings of carbon nanotubes is formed.
Claims5
A one-dimensional tin-carbon composite nanostructure comprising:
- a single tin nanowire consisting of a single crystal of elemental tin and partially contained in one or two chemically-deposited carbon nanotubes, each nanotube having an outer diameter of between 100 nm and 200 nm, the tin nanowire having a middle section with two end sections, each end section of the tin nanowire comprising a tip, wherein at least a portion of one end section is contained in a chemically-deposited carbon nanotube, but the middle section of the tin nanowire is not contained in a carbon nanotube.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.