title: Organic nanowire hierarchy over fabric platform for flexible cold cathode.
abstract: Organic charge transfer (CT) complexes initiated a growing interest in modern electronic devices owing to their easy processability and unique characteristics. In this work, three-dimensional field emitters comprising metal-organic charge transfer complex nanostructures of AgTCNQ and CuTCNQ (TCNQ, 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane) over flexible fabric substrate are realized. Deliberate control over the reaction parameter during organic solid phase reaction leads to modification in structural parameters of the nanowires (i.e. length, diameter) as well as their arrangement atop the carbon fibers. The optimized arrays of AgTCNQ and CuTCNQ nanowires exhibit excellent field electron emission performance with very low turn-on (1.72 and 2.56 V μm(-1)) and threshold fields (4.21 and 6.33 V μm(-1)) respectively, which are comparable to those of the best organic field emitters reported to date. The underlying conducting carbon cloth with special woven-like geometry not only offers a flexible platform for nanowire growth, but also provides an additional field enhancement to ease the electron emission.
authors.affiliation: Thin Films and Nanoscience Laboratory, Department of Physics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032, India.
authors.forename: Soumen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maiti
authors.forename: Uday Narayan
authors.initials: UN
authors.lastname: Maiti
authors.forename: Shreyasi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pal
authors.forename: Kalyan Kumar
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Chattopadhyay