Carbon Nanotubes And Related Materials, Field Emission Display

Cathode ray tube (CRTs) display is one kind of information display with the highest performance to price ratio and the highest qualities on display color and imaging widely accepted. However, CRTs have some deficiencies, for instance, they are very heavy, have huge volumes, and need high power consumption. In this thesis, the developing of the most important flat panel displays (FPDs) technologies in recent years has been reviewed. Upon this, it can be deduced that the field emission display (FED) is a way to flatten CRTs. The reasons are that the FED is flat panel display with the display color and imaging qualities of CRTs, and the FED may be the candidate for the developing CRTs new productions.In this thesis, the following topics have been studied systemically. The large area silicon cold cathodes with microtip arrays have been fabricated for FED. The emission properties of diamond films on predeposited diamond crystal seed substrate have been studied. The carbon nano tubes (CNTs) cold cathodes have been formed by screen-printing process, and CNT-FED devices have been made especially. The main experimental results and conclusions presented in this thesis are summarized as follows.5 inch silicon micro-tip cold cathode arrays has been designed and fabricated. The cathode is designed using multi- p-n junction structure to make the line electrode insulated each others. It is found that the emission properties of silicon cold cathode can be improved by sharpening the tips, or by coated a Mo metal layer on the tips. The emission properties of Mo coated silicon tips are found deviation from the Fowler-Nordheim theory. The reason may be that there exist some interfaces in this cathode and the electrons transport process will be different from that of metals.It is found that the diamond film grown on the Si substrate with predeposited diamond crystal seed not only can get higher growth rate, butalso can improve the emission properties of diamond film. It is thought that the emission process happened with the participation of diamond crystal, graphite, amorphous carbon and intra-face states in the diamond films.The paste of well-dispersed carbon nano tubes for screen-printed CNT cold cathode has been made up. A novel patterning technology of fine-pitched carbon nano tubes pixels on photo resists layer has been developed by lift-off process. Another new sealing technology named flat panel sealed method in vacuum chamber for FED or other electro-vacuum devices has also been developed. The screen printed carbon nano tube field emission display device fabrication process has been set up and a 2. 2 inch CNT-FED device has been obtained.