Ballasted and electrically steerable carbon nanotube field emitters

M. T. Cole; C. Li; K. Qu; Y. Zhang; B. Wang; D. Pribat; W. I. Milne

doi:10.1117/12.932388

27 September 2012 Ballasted and electrically steerable carbon nanotube field emitters

M. T. Cole, C. Li, K. Qu, Y. Zhang, B. Wang, D. Pribat, W. I. Milne

Proceedings Volume 8462, Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene, and Associated Devices V; 84620R (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.932388
Event: SPIE NanoScience + Engineering, 2012, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Here we present our on-going efforts toward the development of stable ballasted carbon nanotube-based field emitters employing hydrothermally synthesized zinc oxide nanowires and thin film silicon-on-insulator substrates. The semiconducting channel in each controllably limits the emission current thereby preventing detrimental burn-out of individual emitters that occurs due to unavoidable statistical variability in emitter characteristics, particularly in their length. Fabrication details and emitter characterization are discussed in addition to their field emission performance. The development of a beam steerable triode electron emitter formed from hexagonal carbon nanotube arrays with central focusing nanotube electrodes, is also described. Numerical ab-initio simulations are presented to account for the empirical emission characteristics. Our engineered ballasted emitters have shown some of the lowest reported lifetime variations (< 0.7%) with on-times of < 1 ms, making them ideally-suited for next-generation displays, environmental lighting and portable x-rays sources.

Citation Download Citation

M. T. Cole, C. Li, K. Qu, Y. Zhang, B. Wang, D. Pribat, and W. I. Milne "Ballasted and electrically steerable carbon nanotube field emitters", Proc. SPIE 8462, Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene, and Associated Devices V, 84620R (27 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.932388

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