Carbon Nanotubes Decorated with Platinum Nanoparticles\nfor Field-Emission Application

Abstract

In this work, a simple and scalable\nmethod was presented to decorate\ncarbon nanotubes (CNTs) with platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) by atomic\nlayer deposition (ALD) for field emission (FE) application. The size\nand distribution of NPs were precisely controlled by adjusting the\nnumber of ALD cycles. It was discovered that a higher cycle number\nof ALD resulted in continuously increased conductivity of the CNTs@Pt\nnanocomposite. It could be explained by not only the increased loading\nof Pt NPs but also by the gradually decreased presence of the PtO\ncompound in NPs. As a result, a significant improvement in the FE\ncharacteristics of the cold cathode was observed because of the decoration\nof CNTs with metal NPs. The higher number of ALD cycles resulted in\nthe gradual lowering of the turn-on electric field which reached a\nminimum value of ∼0.43 V/μm after 100 cycles of ALD.