A high-performance triode-type carbon nanotube field emitter for mass production

Abstract

A triode-type field emission device based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) synthesized on an anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template was fabricated. For the improvement of device performance, in addition to the basic advantages of using AAO to obtain uniform CNTs with strong adhesion, several considerations were taken into account, including highly crystalline CNTs synthesized through thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at 1200 °C, lowering the contact resistance with a Ti buffer layer and reducing the pixel size and gate-to-emitter distance. The triode-type field emitter showed a high current density of 20 mA cm−2 and a low turn-on voltage of 16 V. The very high field enhancement factor of 1.6 × 106 cm−1 confirmed the high efficiency of the triode structure in electron extraction.