Energy distribution of field-emitted electrons from carbon nanotubes

The energy distribution of the field emission from single-wall carbon nanotubes is investigated by the tight-binding approach with the tunneling theory. We find that the shape of the energy distribution depends on the chirality of nanotubes and both single-peak and multi-peak energy distributions may occur in specific applied fields. The different peaks can be attributed to coming from different energy bands of nanotubes. With the applied field increasing the peaks become wide and the position of the peaks shifts to lower energy under Fermi surface, while the position of the peaks shifts to above Fermi surface as temperature increases. Our findings could provide some useful information for the relevant experiments.