Improved field emission performance of carbon nanotube by introducing copper metallic particles

Abstract To improve the field emission performance of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a simple and low-cost method was adopted in this article. We introduced copper particles for decorating the CNTs so as to form copper particle-CNT composites. The composites were fabricated by electrophoretic deposition technique which produced copper metallic particles localized on the outer wall of CNTs and deposited them onto indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode. The results showed that the conductivity increased from 10-5 to 4 × 10-5 S while the turn-on field was reduced from 3.4 to 2.2 V/μm. Moreover, the field emission current tended to be undiminished after continuous emission for 24 h. The reasons were summarized that introducing copper metallic particles to decorate CNTs could increase the surface roughness of the CNTs which was beneficial to field emission, restrain field emission current from saturating when the applied electric field was above the critical field. In addition, it could also improve the electrical contact by increasing the contact area between CNT and ITO electrode that was beneficial to the electron transport and avoided instable electron emission caused by thermal injury of CNTs.