Design and Demonstration of Carbon Nanotubes(CNTs)-Based Field Emission Device

Abstract

Since its discovery, carbon nanotube (CNT), possessing a series of particularly electrical and mechanical property as well chemical stability, has been considered as one of the most advanced electronics materials. A lot of research has been extensively carrying through on CNTs’ potential applications for instance, gas storage, quanta lead, electron device, catalyst carrier, and etc. Among its various applications, more talked is its application as field emission cathode (FEC) material to make large-area, full-colored and high efficiency displays or lighting devices (FEC-LED) because of its excellent field emission property. Compared with the other material of field emission cathode, CNT-FEC devices have a series of unique performances, such as higher field emission efficiency, lower power consume, lower cost, non pollute problem in its production processes, and so on. Those advantages come from the following physical and chemical mechanism: 1. CNT possesses so large aspect ratio in structure that the field enhancement factor CNT can reach 30000 to 50000 for single CNT, 800 to 3000 for CNT film, no mater what state , standing or lying they are. Therefore CNT is such an excellent field emitter that CNTFEC can easily provide necessary current under a lower drive voltage with much lower power consume. 2. CNT-FED workmanship is simply, the material cost is low. When the manufacture is enlarged, it can compete with other technologies of display or lighting devices in price. On the other hand there are still some theoretical and technical problems need to be solved before CNT-FED being get more competitive applications on the market, for example, its feasibility of a large scale production,full colored field, optimal structure design, spatial homogeneity, stability, lifespan, as well as its low cost fabrication technology. this chapter mainly concerns these problems mentioned and gives some elementary discussion in for our further understand of them, including:  The research on the field emission properties of CNT and computer simulation based on Fowler-Nordheims theory;