By using alcohol as the carbon source, a new simple catalytic chemical vapor deposition technique to synthesize high-purity single-walled carbon nanotubes at low temperature is demonstrated. Because of the etching effect of decomposed OH radical attacking carbon atoms with a dangling bond, impurities such as amorphous carbon, multi-walled carbon nanotubes, metal particles and carbon nanoparticles are completely suppressed even at relatively low reaction temperature such as 700-800 degreesC. By using methanol, generation of SWNTs even at 550 degreesC is demonstrated. The high-purity synthesis at low temperature promises large scale production at low cost and the direct growth of SWNTs on conventional semiconductor devices already patterned with aluminum. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.