Carbon Nanotube Field Emission Display Technology

With the development of vacuum microelectronics, Carbon nanotubes field emission display (CNT-FED) has experienced the transition from fundamental research to application. In the field of flat display, especially for military purpose, CNT-FED has many advantages over other technologies. Screen printing is a low-cost and effective technology to fabricate CNT field emission cathode. In this thesis, by investigating the preparation of CNT paste, fabricating cathode electrode, the sinter of the cathode and surface treatment, we found a way to fabricating CNT field emission cathode by screen printing, and obtained satisfying CNT cathodes. In experiments, we also found that the density of CNT cathode arrays slightly reduces with the rise of the sinter temperature.Structure design is very important for CNT-FED. CNT cathode arrays fabricated by screen printing are used to construct diode-FED, triode-FED and double-gate quadrode-FED. We have done experiments with these structures and measured their field emission characteristic. We use the vertical cone-shaped hole HOP spacer and the oblique cone-shaped hole HOP spacers, which are provided by LG-Philips Display Corporation, as the gate electrodes of triode and quadrode FED. The threshold electric field of diode-FED is less than 2 V/μm, and the emission current can reach 900μA in the anode electric field of 3.5 V/μm. Comparing these structures, we think the best is the interlaced gate quadrode-FED constructed with oblique cone-shaped hole HOP spacer. Its threshold electric field is less than 2 V/μm, and the anode current can reach 900μA in the modulating electric field of 3.1 V/μm.In this thesis, the sealing technique of CNT-FED is also investigated. It includes pretreating components, smearing frit, assembling components, frit sintering and vacuum exhaust. We resolve some problems in the sealing process, such as the loss of CNT on cathode, the leak of vent-pipe, the flaw of display panel, and have successfully sealed diode CNT-FED devices.Finally, we develop "seven segment display" dynamic diode-FED and 32×32 matrix dynamic diode-FED and their driving circuits. The "seven segment display" dynamic diode-FED can display the figures of "0~9" at the frequency of 1Hz. The 32×32 matrix dynamic diode-FED adopts matrix addressing and realizes 16 gradations dynamic display of Chinese characters. The data of display image and logic control signal are provided by CPLD of Altera Corporation.