Characterization of Self-Assembly and Evolution in Carbon Nanotube Thin Film Field Emitter

Author

Sinha, N. ; Mahapatra, D. Roy ; Yeowa, J.T.W. ; Melnik, R.V.N. ; Jaffray, D.A.

Author_Institution

Department of Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, ON, N2L3G1, Canada

Volume

2

fYear

2006

fDate

17-20 June 2006

Firstpage

673

Lastpage

676

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are found to be good sources of cold cathode electron for a variety of technological applications. In this paper, we analyze the evolution and self-assembly of randomly oriented CNTs in a thin film during field emission under diode configuration. A model of the evolution of CNT thin film is proposed, where the CNTs are assumed to decay by fragmentation and formation of plasma consisting of carbon atoms and impurities. The random orientation of the CNTs and the electrodynamic interaction among themselves are modeled to explain the self-assembly caused by dynamic reorientation of the CNTs. Finally, the nucleation coupled degradation model and the electrodynamic forcing model are employed to estimate the current-voltage characteristics based on the modified Fowler-Nordheim equation for field emission. The simulated results are in close agreement with the experimental results.

Keywords

Field emission; carbon nanotube array; electrodynamic; evolution; self-assembly; Carbon dioxide; Carbon nanotubes; Cathodes; Diodes; Electrodynamics; Electrons; Plasma applications; Plasma properties; Self-assembly; Transistors; Field emission; carbon nanotube array; electrodynamic; evolution; self-assembly;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nanotechnology, 2006. IEEE-NANO 2006. Sixth IEEE Conference on

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0077-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NANO.2006.247744

Filename

1717194