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Growth of uniform carbon‐nanotube arrays with sandwich technology
Author(s) -
Chen Zexiang,
Zhang Qiang,
Zhu Bingjin,
Engelsen Daniel,
Bachmann Peter K.,
Lewalter Astrid
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of the society for information display
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1938-3657
pISSN - 1071-0922
DOI - 10.1889/1.2918086
Subject(s) - carbon nanotube , materials science , field electron emission , chemical vapor deposition , substrate (aquarium) , electric field , nanotechnology , optoelectronics , microwave , space charge , nanotube , deposition (geology) , catalysis , chemistry , paleontology , biochemistry , oceanography , physics , quantum mechanics , sediment , geology , biology , electron
— In this work, a novel approach to grow structured, highly oriented carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which are vertically aligned to the substrate and show large field emission is reported. Growth is performed on lithographically defined dots of catalysts, which can be deposited on metallic, semiconducting, and glass substrates. A sandwiched catalyst structure and microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition enables the formation of uniform CNT arrays of 1.6 × 1.6 μm 2 . The method is easily scalable to large areas. The CNT arrays exhibit a stable field emission of 20 mA and a macroscopic current density of 50 mA/cm 2 at a rather low electric field of 5.33 V/μm. Modeling of space charge indicates that space charge reduces the magnitude of the CNT emission at high field strength: this agrees satisfactorily with the measurements.