Search for an Optimal Performance of Multi-Wall Carbon Nanotubes in Field Emission

The field emission performance of different compositions of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCN) are studied theoretically based on the quantum tunneling theory with the tight-binding approach. We found that the key characteristics of all MWCNs are almost independent of the composition and the layer number of MWCN for MWCNs with the layer number being more than three. The interlayer coupling of MWCN can induce the semiconductor-metal phase transition, which leads to most of MWCNs to be actually metallic, and the chiral and quantum size effects disappear