Dramatic enhancement of the emission current density from carbon nanotube based nanosize tips with extremely low onset fields.
Nanostructures based on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) are fabricated using plasma of the mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen gases. The plasma-sharpened tips of nanotubes contain only a few tubes at the apex of the structure and lead to the dramatic enhancement in the emission current density by a factor >10(6) with the onset field as low as 0.16 V/microm. We propose that the nature of the tunneling barrier changes significantly for a nanosize tip at very high local electric field and may lead to the saturation in the emission current density.
Hazra
Kiran Shankar
KS
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai-400 076, India.
Rai
Padmnabh
P
Mohapatra
Dipti Ranjan
DR
Kulshrestha
Neha
N
Bajpai
Reeti
R
Roy
Soumyendu
S
Misra
D S
DS