Field emission microscopy study of freestanding carbon nanotube array

Abstract

In carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays, unequal current contribution from each emitter to the overall emission current would lead to non-uniform field emission (FE) performance and emitter failure. Therefore, we propose a novel field emission microscopy (FEM) method that allows us to visualize and record the FE performance of each emitter in free standing CNT arrays. In this study, this method successfully leads us to record and observe that about 70% of the emitters participate in the FE and two of them make a very strong FE contribution in an 11×11 freestanding CNT array. This study proves that this method will facilitate the study of FE non-uniformity and emitter failure mechanism by overcoming the difficulty of observing and quantifying FE performance of each emitter in CNT arrays.