Field emission under extreme conditions from carbon nanopearls in a foam-like arrangement

This paper reports the CVD synthesis and field emission (FE) properties of a novel cost-effective carbon nanomaterial, ´carbon nanopearls´, monodisperse solid 150 nm diameter nanospheres of carbon that form continuous 3D chains analogous to strings of pearls. Nanopearls-tips present good emission stabilities for total currents of μA during hours with a simple voltage retroaction loop. This is promising for applications that require FE under very poor vacuum, in the range of 10^-5 to 10^-4 Torr for example.