Fabrication and field emission properties of carbon nanotubes

Research on the area of the fabrication of carbon nanotubes is fundamental and critical to the entire subject of carbon nanotubes. This dissertation describes an experiment to fabricate carbon nanotubes by the method of Microwave Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (MPECVD) and the electron field emission properties of carbon nanotubes.;A MPECVD system was built and used to fabricate the vertical aligned carbon nanotube film. Scanning electron microscope (SEM), Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to characterize the as-grown carbon nanotube samples. By using a metal-containing diblock copolymer catalyst, carbon nanotubes with a diameter of 4 to 7 nm were synthesized. The effect of growth parameters was studied and these parameters were optimized. The growth of high density (∼ 109/cm2) and large coverage area (∼ 1 cm2) carbon nanotube film on glass substrate at low growth temperature was realized. Based on a series of experiments, the effects of oxygen atoms and Ti/N underlayer on the growth were studied.;A series of experiments were evaluated to characterize the field emission properties of the various carbon nanotube cathodes. A simple technique of scratching the pattern surface by a cotton swab was found effective to activate more carbon nanotubes to emit. By using the techniques of photolithography and shadow mask, various carbon nanotube patterns were achieved in order to obtain high emission current density and a low threshold electric field. The lowest threshold electric field was found to be 2.3 V/um. The highest current density was found to be 2.2 mA/cm2 when the electric field was 4.7 V/um. Our work shows that it is feasible to provide greater control over the fabrication of carbon nanotubes so that more obstacles in the broad application of carbon nanotubes can be overcome.