Effect of length and spacing of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes on field emission properties

The length and the spacing of carbon nanotube (CNT) films are varied independently to investigate their effect on the field-emission characteristics of the vertically aligned CNT films grown by plasma-enhanced hot filament chemical vapor deposition using pulsed-current electrochemically deposited catalyst particles. It is shown that, in general, the macroscopic electric field E-mac,E-1, defined as the electric field when the emission current density reaches 1 mA/cm(2), can be reduced by increasing the length and the spacing of CNTs. However, for the very-high-density CNT films, the increase of length increases E-mac,E-1 slightly, whereas for the very short CNT films, the increase of spacing does not effectively reduce E-mac,E-1. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.