Production of multi-wall carbon nanotubes starting from a commercial graphite Pencil using an electric arc discharge in aqueous medium

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are studied because of their diverse applications in many fields, such as medicine, computing, physics, chemistry, and others. Therefore, it is crucial to develop techniques for producing a large volume of high-quality multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with the best cost-to-benefit ratio. In this paper, we obtain MWCNTs via an arc-electric alternative route, which dispenses catalysts and sealed cameras using water as an insulating medium. This method is simple, cost-effective (starting from pieces of commercial graphite pencil), efficient, and highly reproducible. Since no catalysts are used, no purification post-treatment was necessary, leading to high-quality MWCNTs. This technique is very promising for industrial applications because a lot of high-quality MWCNTs could be easily produced in a short time.