US Patent 7378075 - Sol gel CNT alignment

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7378075.html

This patent from Mitsubishi teaches a simplified method of forming aligned carbon nanotube bundles having smaller nanotube diameters for applications such as field emission using a sol-gel approach. Claim 1 reads:

1. A process for preparing aligned nanotubes on a porous carrier, the process comprising:

preparing a porous carrier having fine pores of 0.1 to 50 nm by a sol-gel method;

loading a catalyst onto the porous carrier by contacting the porous carrier with a base in an aqueous solution of a metal salt and drying and burning the solution within the pores of the porous carrier; and

depositing a carbon compound on the porous carrier to form a nanotube film aligned perpendicular to the porous carrier.