Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Dean, Kenneth A.
• Chalamala, Babu R.

Titel

The environmental stability of field emission from single-walled carbon nanotubes

Ist Teil von

• Applied physics letters, 1999-11, Vol.75 (19), p.3017-3019

Erscheinungsjahr

1999

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

American Institute of Physics

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We demonstrate long-term field emission stability from single-walled carbon nanotubes. Unballasted nanotubes operate without degradation for over 350 h at 10−9 Torr. Nanotubes are shown to be significantly less sensitive to operating environments than metallic emitters. In 10−7 Torr of H2O, we demonstrate 100 h of continuous bias field emission with no current degradation. Protrusion growth and current runaway, typical problems for unballasted metal emitters, are not observed with nanotubes. Single-walled nanotubes do show susceptibility to damage by oxidation. We suggest that the exceptional environmental stability of carbon nanotubes is due to a combination of geometry, strong carbon bonding, and the lack of protrusion growth.