The Characteristic Of Field Emission From Carbon Nanotubes After Electrochemistry Treatment

Flat panel display represents the developing direction of display technology. FED (field emission display) is the flatten CRT (Cathode-Ray Tube). And FED is a hot research in home and abroad. The key technology of FED is the cold cathode technology. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have many advantages as the candidate of cathode material such as high rate of length and diameter, stable physical and chemical properties et.al. But CNTs have some disadvantage characters such as high work function, mixture of CNTs with different conductivity, length, single wall and multi-wall carbon nanotubes exist at the same time, difficult to be contacted with metal electrode. Alkali metals as the N type impurity can improve CNTs conductance and decrease its work function.This thesis shows an electrochemistry method to improve field emission characters of CNTs. In this electrochemistry treatment process, alkali metal chloride solution is used. By testing and comparing the field emission properties before and after treatment, the effect of electrochemical treatment of CNTs was studied. The experiment results indicate that after being treated in LiCl solution of 0.1mol/l, the process improves CNTs field emission by decreasing its work function. The Raman spectra of CNTs shows that the structure of CNTs has changed after being electrochemical treated in alkali metal chloride solution and affect its character of field emission.