reaction temperature is reached a hydrocarbon source gas 21 is introduced into the reaction chamber at an optimal flow rate the gases are pumped into the reaction chamber 33 through the gas inlet 17 and blown onto the substrate 34 using a quartz gas distributor 16 exhaust gas leaves the chamber through the gas outlet 18 in this embodiment the reaction is set to 30 minutes after the reaction the resulting product is scratched from the substrate previous experiments by varadan v et al u201c synthesis of carbon nanocoils by microwave cvd u201d smart mater struct 11 2002 728 734 did not involve the production of carbon nanocoils and utilized different processing materials and conditions than described in the present invention the advantage of using a microwave field is that it is uniform throughout the reaction chamber 33 this uniform field allows for a higher quantity of coiled carbon nanotubes with consistent properties to be produced during each reaction in addition a microwave field can be instantly turned off whereas a reaction chamber heated by a furnace must be allowed to cool to room temperature before any nanotubes can be extracted this dramatically reduces the lag time between production rounds in the preferred embodiment of the invention a commercially available.