Fabrication of single-phase titanium carbide layers from MWCNTs using high DC pulse.

Single-phase layered titanium carbide (TiC) was successfully synthesized by reacting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) under a high direct current (DC) pulse. Single-phase TiC layer fabrication is confirmed as the transformation of multi-layered graphene from MWCNTs. Therefore its thickness and width is almost identical to those of transformed graphene layers. This is the first report on the formation of single-phase layered nano-TiC. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) were used for the characteristic analysis of single-phase layered TiC structures.