Dramatically enhancing the yield of carbon nanotubes by simply adding oxygen-containing molecules in solid-state synthesis.

By adding just a small amount of commercially available oxygen-containing molecules (OCMs), organometallic precursors could be easily converted to CNTs with high yield and high quality through the solid-state pyrolysis (SSP) process, although only nanospheres were obtained under the same conditions without the presence of OCMs, providing a convenient approach for the preparation of CNTs.