The effect of Ar neutral beam treatment of screen-printed carbon nanotubes for enhanced field emission

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of an Ar neutral beam as a surface treatment for improving the field emission properties of screen-printed carbon nanotubes (CNTs). A short period of the neutral beam treatment on tape-activated CNTs enhanced the emission properties of the CNTs, showing a decrease in the turn-on field and an increase in the number of emission sites. The neutral beam treatment appeared to render the CNT surfaces more actively by exposing more CNTs from the CNT paste without cutting or kinking the already exposed long CNT emitters. The treated CNTs emitted more electrons than the CNTs treated using other methods. When the field emission properties were measured after the neutral beam treatment, the turn-on field decreased from 1.65to0.60V∕μm and the emission field at 1mA∕cm2 decreased from 3.10to2.41V∕μm. After the neutral beam treatment for 10s, there was an improvement in the stability of the emission current at a constant electric field. It is expected that the neutral beam treatment introduced in this study will provide an easy way of improving the emission intensity and stability of screen-printed CNT emitters.

Low angle forward reflected neutral beam source and its applications

“…The long-term emission current stability of the neutral beam treated CNT field emitters was measured at a constant voltage of 1200 V before and after the neutral beam treatment for 10 s under similar conditions shown in figure 14. shows the change in field emission current as a function of the operating time. As shown in the figure, significant degradation of the emission current density was observed after 240 min of operation on the untreated sample [38]. However, the CNT emitters treated with the Ar neutral beam for 10 s showed more stable emission properties than the untreated sample without any significant degradation or arcing during operation.…”

“…Long-term emission stability of the CNT emitter before and after the Ar neutral beam treatment for 10 s under the conditions shown infigure 14. The figure is reprinted from[38].…”

Correlation between the saturation of emission current and defect co-ordination number for irradiated aligned multiwalled carbon nanotubes

“…Varieties of new phenomena have been reported by various groups on the effects of ion irradiation on the properties of carbon nanotubes [1][2][3]. Multiple groups have made efforts in modifying the field emission from the CNT samples by the irradiation of electrons and ions of various energy and laser photons [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Sometimes contradictory results such as, both improvements and deterioration in field emission properties due to the ion irradiation [4][5][6][7][8] have been reported by various groups.…”

Enhancement of Photoelectrochemical Performance of Ag@ZnO Nanowires: Experiment and Mechanism

“…Decorated ZnO materials are promising candidates as conductors with the absorption of visible light being enhanced and the combination of photogenerated electron-holes being suppressed [23,24]. Recently, varieties of metal-doped or decorated semiconductor compounds nanostructures morphologies [5,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31], such as nanowires, nanotubes, nanorods, nanoflowers, nanorings, nanobelts, nanosheets, nanowalls, nanograsses, and heterostructures, have been successfully synthesized using multiple methods, including chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [32,33], screen printing technologies [34,35], hydrothermal method [36,37], hydrothermal and chemical method [38], the thermal evaporation process [39], thermal evaporation method [40], and a template-free single-step hydrothermal method [41]. However, CVD and magnetron sputtering (MS) methods are very common methods for growth of nanomaterial with different morphologies.…”