Physics Commons^™

Shaping Carbon Nanotube Forests For Field Emission, Benjamin Pound

Student Showcase

Field emission is a phenomenon where electrons are extracted from a conducting material by an external electric field. This effect has been used for electron sources for many applications, from electron microscopes to flat-panel displays. One undesirable feature of field emitters is that they often require high turn-on voltages. One way to improve the field emission is to decrease the tip size. In previous works, single carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with nanometer tip sizes have been used as field emitters, and have achieved currents comparable or higher than commercial field emitters at relatively low operating voltages. However, the single CNT field …