Development of high‐brightness flat field‐emission lamp with a special electrode system for block dimming BLUs for LCDs

Abstract

Abstract— A flat field‐emission lamp (FFEL) has been developed that utilizes a specially designed electrode structure and an unique nanostructure carbon electron emitter called a carbon nanometer electron exit (CNX) emitter. CNX emitters have been developed on metal‐wire substrates with a special plasma chemical‐vapor‐deposition technique. Field electron emission from CNX emitters has been investigated in a vacuum of 2×10−4 Pa by using a diode configuration with an A–K space of 1 mm, which shows that an emission current of 5.7 A/cm2 can be obtained at an electrical‐field strength of 2.2 V/μm. Then, the emission‐current stability was also carried out to investigate the CNX‐emitter lifetime. Also, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and micro‐Raman spectrum was used to characterize the CNX film. Furthermore, the design of the special diode emission system was optimized by simulating the electron orbits with a commercial software, the result of which indicates that the emission system was used to effectively extract electrons from the emitter and control the local block dimming. And, also, a simple FFEL structure was used to illustrate the simulation results. Finally, a 7‐in. FFEL has been successfully fabricated, demonstrating a luminance of 15,000 cd/m2 with an anode voltage of 6 kV.