Building a backlight unit with lateral gate structure based on carbon nanotube field emitters

This paper describes the fabrication of a backlight unit for liquid crystal display based on printed carbon nanotube field emitters with lateral gate and additional mesh structures. The device architecture has been optimized through field emission characterization and supporting numerical simulation. The emission current depends strongly on the cathode-gate gap, mesh position, and mesh bias. Direct observation of luminous images on a phosphor screen reveals that the electron beams undergo a noticeable shrinkage along the lateral direction with increasing anode bias, which is in good agreement with the simulation results. We suggest and demonstrate a modified structure equipped with double emitter edges leading to similar to 20% improved phosphor efficiency (34.4 lm W-1) and luminance (9600 cd m(-2)), compared to those from a single edge structure.