Abstract

A novel composite plating method has been developed for the fabrication of carbon nanotube/Ni (CNT/Ni) field emission cathode. The field emission properties of the initial CNT/Ni field emitter show a low turn-on electric field E on of about 1.1 V/μm with an emission current density of 1 μA/cm 2, and a low threshold electric field E th of about 1.7 V/μm with an emission current density of 1 mA/cm 2. After performing a stability test with a high emission current density in high vacuum, the corresponding microstructure and the degree of graphitization of the CNT/Ni field emitter were measured by using scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. We found that the degree of graphitization slowly decreases with the duration time t FE of the stability test, the size of small rod-like CNT/Ni composite structures in the film increases with t FE, and obvious cracks appear in the film as t FE is larger than 60 h. The degradation of the field emission properties may be explained by the Joule heating effect on the CNT/Ni field emitter under high emission current density.

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