A new technique of synthesizing high-quality single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) directly on the surface of silicon and quartz substrates has been developed by means of the low-temperature catalytic CVD method using ethanol. The proposed method does not employ conventional deposition/sputtering for the mounting of catalytic metals on the substrates, but it adopts an easy and costless liquid-based dip-coat approach without need of support/underlayer materials that were often used in previous studies. The substrate surface is blackened with a uniform layer of SWNTs after the CVD at an optimum condition. The optical absorption of 'as-grown' SWNTs has first been measured using thereby prepared SWNT-synthesized quartz substrate. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.