Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Seemless Three-Dimensional Carbon Nanotube Graphene Hybrid Material, Yu Zhu, Lei Li, Gilberto Casillas, Zhengzong Sun, Zheng Yan, Gedeng Ruan, Zhiwei Peng, Abdul-Rahman Raji, Carter Kittrell, Robert Hauge, James Tour

Yu Zhu

Graphene and single-walled carbon nanotubes are carbon materials that exhibit excellent electrical conductivities and large specific surface areas. Theoretical work suggested that a covalently bonded graphene/single-walled carbon nanotube hybrid material would extend those properties to three dimensions, and be useful in energy storage and nanoelectronic technologies. Here we disclose a method to bond graphene and single-walled carbon nanotubes seamlessly during the growth stage. The hybrid material exhibits a surface area 42,000m2 g1 with ohmic contact from the vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes to the graphene. Using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, we observed the covalent transformation of sp2 carbon between …