Acrylonitrile, an advantageous precursor to synthesize nitrogen doped carbon nanotubes

Abstract The nitrogen doped carbon nanotubes present specific characteristics that offer better performance than pure carbon nanotubes for application like biomedicine, hydrogen adsorption and electrocataytic devices. This work present a simple method to obtain well-aligned nitrogen doped multi wall carbon nanotubes, which present open channels with diameter around 50 nm. These carbon nanotubes are obtained using acrylonitrile as carbon and nitrogen source, which offers some advantages on the use of other precursors like ammonia, pyridine, benzylamine, acetonitrile or melamine.