Field emission from carbon nanotubes deposited on platinum and nickel/nickel oxide multilayers

Although carbon nanotubes have been shown to be excellent field emitters, very little is known about the emission mechanism. This work strives to gain insight on field enhancement in films of single-walled carbon nanotubes by studying the internal field emission between the back contact metal and the nanotubes, and the external field emission between the nanotubes and vacuum. Test devices of different work functions were fabricated from platinum and from nickel / nickel oxide. Nickel oxide was deposited by e-beam evaporation or grown by thermal oxidation and characterized by Auger electron spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction and ellipsometry. Carbon nanotubes were deposited onto these test structures and current-voltage measurements were taken. Fowler-Nordheim plots were constructed from this data and analyzed. It was determined that external field emission was most likely to be responsible for electron emission.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Belle Ewei, 1977-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Akintunde I. Akinwande.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9098

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9098