Carbon nanotube’s modification by focused ion beam irradiation and its healing strategies

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) clusters’ properties and performance have been studied after irradiated by focused ion beam (FIB) Ga ions and post annealing recovery methods. The SWNT was irradiated by FIB with different energy and different doses ranging from 1013 to 1017 ions/cm2. Raman spectroscopy results showed that FIB with larger energy or larger ion dose would cause distinct SWNT structure defects. It was also found that scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations would slightly affect the SWNT’s Raman results by electron beam induced carbon deposition. Resulting from the unique reconstruction ability of carbon nanotube’s (CNT’s) network structures, the SWNT’s ion-induced defects can be effectively healed by the post heat annealing from 300 °C to 600 °C for the ion dose less than 1016 ions/cm2. And laser irradiation annealing method also studied to heal the defects in SWNT with 25 mW laser power. Research results would be beneficial for the optimization of the carbon nanotube devices’ functionalizations using FIB Ga ions irradiation.