Date of Award

Fall 11-2014

Access Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Virginie Rollin

First Committee Member

Sathya Gangadharan

Second Committee Member

Sirish Namilae

Third Committee Member

John Mathis

Abstract

The discovery of fullerenes has opened up modern studies in carbon materials. Carbon nanoparticles have a large surface area and demonstrate good conductivity. Their unique properties has gained attention in many areas such as water filtration, hydrogen storage and battery electrodes. In this research, carbon spheres with high specific area and uniformity were grown using the Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) process with silicon substrates, ethylene (C2H4) as a carbon precursor and argon as the inert gas. We observe that the morphology of carbon spheres largely depend on the experimental conditions, including CVD time duration, temperature, catalyst and flow of gases. This thesis discusses the synthesis and effects of catalyst on carbon spheres.

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