High-current-density field emission display fabricated from single-walled carbon nanotube electron sources

¹ Department of Physics Zhejiang University, Hang Zhou 310027, P.R. China
² Department of Mechanics Zhejiang University, Hang Zhou 310027, P.R. China

Corresponding author: miaowang@css.edu.cn

Received: 30 November 2007
Revised: 22 February 2008
Accepted: 19 March 2008
Published online: 30 April 2008

Abstract

Single-walled carbon nanotubes can be used as electron sources in the process of field emission, and have great potential for practical application of the field emission display (FED) panels with large screen size. We fabricated a FED using the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) as the cathode by the screen-printing process. Test showed that the SWNTs emitters exhibit excellent macroscopic emission properties. It has low turn-on voltage (2.7 V/μm) and high brightness, with a high current density of good uniformity and stability. It was observed that the field emission qualitatively follows the conventional Fowler–Nordheim (F–N) theory, and aging treatment played an important role in improving the image uniformity and stability. Compared to other complicated processes, the simple fabrication using screen-printing process seems to be advantageous for practical application.