An improved planar-gate triode with CNTs field emitters by electrophoretic deposition

Abstract

An improved planar-gate triode with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) field emitters has been successfully fabricated by conventional photolithography, screen printing and electrophoretic deposition (EPD). In this structure, cathode electrodes and ITO arrays linked with gate electrodes were interdigitated and paralleled on the same plane although the gate electrodes and cathode electrodes were isolated by dielectric layer, a so-called improved planar-gate triode structure. An electrophoretic process was developed to selectively deposit CNTs field emitters onto cathode electrodes in the CNTs suspension by an applied voltage between the gate electrodes and cathode electrodes. The optical microscopy and FESEM image showed that the CNTs emitters with the uniform packing density were selectively defined onto the cathode electrodes. In addition, field emission characteristics of an improved planar-gate triode with CNTs field emitters were investigated. The experiment results indicated that the turn-on voltage of this triode structure at current density of 1μA/cm2 was approximately 55V. The anode current and gate current came to 396μA and 325μA, at gate voltage and anode voltage of 100V and 4000V, respectively and at the anode–cathode spacing of 2000μm. The emission image became brighter and the luminous image with dot matrix on the anode plate obviously increased with the increase of the gate voltage. Moreover, the emission current fluctuation was smaller than 5% for 11h, which indicated that the improved planar-gate triode has a good field emission performance and long lifetime.