Investigations on the Carbon Nanotube Paste Made by the Optimized Ball-Milling Method and Its Applications for the e-Beam Source

Abstract

The carbon nanotube (CNT) has the outstanding mechanical/chemical properties, which makes it a promising electron source for various applications such as the field emission display (FED), the microcolumn, and the X-ray tube. In this work, we have developed the CNT paste by applying the noble ball-milling method to the paste mixer. The newly developed CNT paste was used to fabricate the CNT field emitter whose electric characteristics were evaluated by observing the I–V curve and long-term stability of the emitter. The new CNT paste showed much better electrical characteristics than those of the conventional CNT paste. We also used the CNT tip as a source of the electron beam (e-beam) of the microcolumn and found that the operating range of the e-beam was enhanced by 100% compared to that of the conventional microcolumn where the tungsten tip was used as the e-beam source. By replacing the tungsten tip with the CNT tip, we could not only obtain more flexibility in design of the microcolumn but also remove the alignment problem between the emitter tip and the source lens.