Significant enhancement in field emission and photoluminescence properties of vertically aligned tellurium nanorods by plasma treatment

Abstract

Significant improvement in electron field emission (FE) properties of high density vertically aligned tellurium nanorods (TNRs) arrays has been observed by plasma treatment. At first the TNRs are grown by catalyst free chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method and are systematically characterized by FESEM, EDS, TEM, HRTEM, XRD and XPS. Later on TNRs were treated with plasma (Ar and N) and their effects on morphology, optical and FE properties are investigated comprehensively. The FE of TNRs containing 40–50 nm size have been enhanced from 6.22 Vμm−1 to 3.25 Vμm−1 which is more than 52%. This research reveals that plasma treatment has effectively modified the surface morphology (confirmed by TEM) and created sharp tips on TNRs which act as extra source of field emitters believed to contribute the enhancement of field emission. Plasma treated TNRs not only exhibited excellent FE properties (3.25 Vμm−1), these aligned TNRs also portrayed the tremendous stability with insignificant FE current fluctuation (<4%) for 60 min. Crucially, the reported FE turn-on value is low enough for their potential applications in device fabrications. So these findings offer the improvement in the field emission of TNRs by plasma treatment proposing their potential utilization in devices.