Nitrogen-mediated fabrication of transition metal-carbon nanotube hybrid materials

Abstract

The authors report the simple and easy method to fabricate transition-metal–carbon nanotube hybrid materials through nitrogen mediation. Ni nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed on carbon nanotubes without any pretreatment such as defect activation by strong acids or covalent functionalization processes. A theoretical study of the nitrogen-mediated mechanism using first-principles density functional theory calculations is also presented. The first-principles calculations reveal that pyridinelike nitrogen in carbon nanotubes significantly enhances the binding energy of Ni interacting with carbon nanotubes.