A simple controllable method is introduced to resolve catalyst preparation problems, which is capable of synthesizing well-aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) from the ferrocene-ethanol solutions using an inductively coupled plasma techniques. The experimental results prove that this process can not only take advantage of the characteristics of plasma, greatly facilitates the formation of well-aligned CNTs, but also simplify the preparation procedures of metal catalysts. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.