Résumé
Understanding the kinetic selectivity of carbon nanotube growth at the scale of individual nanotubes is essential for the development of growth methods with high chiral selectivity. Here we report on the use of homodyne polarization microscopy [1,2] for high-throughput imaging of long individual carbon nanotubes under real growth conditions (at ambient pressure, on a substrate), and with sub-second time resolution. Our in situ observations on hundreds of individual nanotubes [3] reveal that about half of them grow at a constant rate all along their lifetime while the other half exhibits stochastic changes in growth rates, and switches between growth, pause and shrinkage. Statistical analysis shows that the growth rate of a given nanotube essentially varies between two values, with similar average ratio (~1.7) regardless of whether the rate change is accompanied by a change in chirality. These switches indicate that the nanotube edge or the catalyst nanoparticle fluctuates between different configurations during growth. In addition, we will report our recent investigations of the influence of the growth parameters (temperature, precursor and etchant concentrations) on the kinetics of growth and etching of individual SWCNTs using the same experimental approach.