title: Floral-clustered few-layer graphene nanosheet array as high performance field emitter.
abstract: Graphene sheet is expected to be a highly efficient field emitter due to its unique electrical properties and open surface with sharp edges. However, it is still a tremendous technical challenge to grow and align a graphene sheet in one particular direction to protrude its sharp edges for good field emission. Here, we report an ideal graphene field emitter of flower-like graphene nanosheets grown on a silicon nanocone array, wherein nanocone array guides the alignment of vertical nanosheets and produces high-density sharp edge protrusions on the conical tip. We observe high performance and stable field emission with low turn-on fields from floral-clustered graphene nanosheets. Protrusive sharp edges on the nanocone tip and optimized spacing between clusters both appear to locally enhance the electric field and dramatically increase field emission. Our new graphene emitter design provides a robust approach to the prospect for development of practical electron sources and advanced devices based on graphene field emitters.
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institution of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Wangning
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Shibing
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.forename: Xiaoxiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Junjie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Changzhi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gu