II International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis ABSTRACTS

PP-I-27
FeMo CVD CATALYSTS FOR THE SELECTIVE PREPARATION OF
SINGLE-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES
Lamouroux E., Kihn Y. 1 , Kalck P., Serp P.
Laboratoire de Catalyse, Chimie Fine et Polymères, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en
Arts Chimiques Et Technologiques, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
1 CEMES-CNRS n°8001, 2 rue Jeanne Marvig 31055 Toulouse, France
e-mail: Philippe.Serp@ensiacet.fr
Nowadays, carbon nanotubes have become a strategic material in the area of
nanotechnologies, and an increasing interest exists from the catalysis community [1,2].
Among the different kind of filamentous carbon single wall nanotubes (SWNT), multi wall
nanotubes (MWNT) and graphite nanofibers (GNF) can be distinguish. SWNT are often
considered as perfect 1D nanostructures so that their peculiar properties have been intensively
studied by physicists and chemists. As far as the synthesis processes are concerned, catalytic
chemical vapor deposition (C-CVD) seems to be the most promising technique in view of an
industrial scale production. Currently, GNF and MWNT can be produced selectively by
C-CVD on a large scale. However, for SWNT, catalytic systems performances in terms of
selectivity and activity are still relatively low. One of the main challenge for the catalytic
growth of SWNT is the control of the catalyst nanoparticles size distribution during the high
temperatures (800-1200°C) process.
Chemical vapor deposition is today a well established technique for the preparation of
highly dispersed supported metal catalysts [3]. However, only scarce reports described the use
of CVD supported catalysts for carbon nanotubes growth [4,5]. Thus, MWNT were produced
from acetylene on FeMo/Al2O3 catalysts [4], and we have also reported a very active and
selective Fe/Al2O3 catalyst prepared from [Fe(CO)5] for MWNT growth from ethylene [5].
In this work, we report for the first time results dealing with SWNT growth by C-CVD
on catalysts produced by fluidized bed organometallic CVD. First results dealing with the
catalytic performances of PtRu/SWNT systems for the selective hydrogenation of
cinnamaldehyde will be also presented.
The heterobimetallic FeMo/Al 2 O 3 CVD catalysts have been prepared from [Fe(CO) 5 ] and
[Mo(CO) 6 ]. The SWNT have been prepared by catalytic CVD from methane at 900°C. We
demonstrated first that monometallic Fe/Al 2 O 3 and Mo/Al 2 O 3 systems are not effective for
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