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Self-Assembly and Cathodoluminescence of Microbelts from Cu-Doped Boron Nitride Nanotubes

Zhi-Gang Chen†‡, Jin Zou§, Qingfeng Liu†, Chenghua Sun‡, Gang Liu†, Xiangdong Yao‡, Feng Li†, Bo Wu†, Xiao-Li Yuan¶, Takashi Sekiguchi¶, Hui-Ming Cheng†* and Gao Qing Lu‡*

^† Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China

^‡ ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials, School of Engineering and AIBN, The University of Queensland, Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia

^§ School of Engineering and Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Queensland, Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia

^¶ Advanced Electronic Materials Center, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan

ACS Nano, 2008, 2 (8), pp 1523–1532

DOI: 10.1021/nn800211z

Publication Date (Web): July 29, 2008

* Address correspondence to cheng@imr.ac.cn, maxlu@uq.edu.au.

Abstract

We report the self-assembly of microbelts from Cu-doped boron nitride nanotubes by chemical vapor deposition using Cu as a catalyst. The BN nanotubes with Cu-encapsulated flat tips have uniform outer diameters of 240 nm, inner diameters of 210 nm, and lengths of 10 μm, and Cu is found to uniformly dope into the nanotubes. Most importantly, the nanotubes are self-assembled to form microbelts with 10 μm in width and tens of micrometers in length. Strong and tunable light emissions from the ultraviolet to visible light range are observed in such Cu-doped microbelts, showing their high potential for applications in lasing, light-emitting diode, and medical diagnosis devices.