Search

Field emission from carbon nanotubes grown on carbon cloth has been studied. An extremely low electric field of less than 0.4V∕μm is required to reach an emission current density of 1mA∕cm2. This ultralow operating electric field of carbon nanotubes grown on carbon cloth is mainly due to a very high field enhancement factor of 1.882×104, which is the result of geometrical configuration of the carbon nanotubes and the substrate. In addition to the field enhancement, the highly disordered microstructure of carbon nanotubes grown on carbon cloth plays an important role to field emission. This unexpected result indicates that the roughness of the substrates on which carbon nanotubes grow is very important. This result also brings us significantly closer to practical applications such as highly efficient lamps, field emission displays, micro vacuum electron sources, etc.

The length and the spacing of carbon nanotube (CNT) films are varied independently to investigate their effect on the field-emission characteristics of the vertically aligned CNT films grown by plasma-enhanced hot filament chemical vapor deposition using pulsed-current electrochemically deposited catalyst particles. It is shown that, in general, the macroscopic electric field Emac,1, defined as the electric field when the emission current density reaches 1 mA/cm2, can be reduced by increasing the length and the spacing of CNTs. However, for the very-high-density CNT films, the increase of length increases Emac,1 slightly, whereas for the very short CNT films, the increase of spacing does not effectively reduce Emac,1.

Patterned growth of freestanding carbon nanotube(s) on submicron nickel dot(s) on silicon has been achieved by plasma-enhanced-hot-filament-chemical-vapor deposition (PE-HF-CVD). A thin film nickel grid was fabricated on a silicon wafer by standard microlithographic techniques, and the PE-HF-CVD was done using acetylene (C2H2) gas as the carbon source and ammonia (NH3) as a catalyst and dilution gas. Well separated, single carbon nanotubes were observed to grow on the grid. The structures had rounded base diameters of approximately 150 nm, heights ranging from 0.1 to 5 μm, and sharp pointed tips. Transmission electron microscopy cross-sectional image clearly showed that the structures are indeed hollow nanotubes. The diameter and height depend on the nickel dot size and growth time, respectively. This nanotube growth process is compatible with silicon integrated circuit processing. Using this method, devices requiring freestanding vertical carbon nanotube(s) such as scanning probe microscopy, field emissi...