title: Phonon-assisted electron emission from individual carbon nanotubes.
abstract: A question of how electrons can escape from one-atom-thick surfaces has seldom been studied and is still not properly answered. Herein, lateral electron emission from a one-atom-thick surface is thoroughly studied for the first time. We study electron emission from side surface of individual electrically biased carbon nanotubes (CNTs) both experimentally and theoretically and discover a new electron emission mechanism named phonon-assisted electron emission. A kinetic model based on coupled Boltzmann equations of electrons and optical phonons is proposed and well describes experimentally measured lateral electron emission from CNTs. It is shown that the electrons moving along a biased CNT can overflow from the one-atom-thick surface due to the absorption of hot forward-scattering optical phonons. A low working voltage, high emission density, and side emission character make phonon-assisted electron emission primarily promising in electron source applications.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China. weixl@pku.edu.cn
authors.forename: Xianlong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Dmitri
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Golberg
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Yoshio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bando
authors.forename: Lianmao
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Peng
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004579:Electron Transport; D004583:Electrons; D008956:Models, Chemical; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D010316:Particle Size
chemical_list: D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon