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.
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