Enhanced electron field emission from single-crystalline LaB6 nanowires with ambient temperature

Large-scale single-crystalline LaB6 nanowires have been fabricated via a catalysis-free vapor phase method using La and BCl3 as starting materials. These nanowires exhibit a low field-emission turn on (4.62 V/μm at 10 μA/cm2) and high current density. The turn-on field is found to decrease clearly from 4.62 to 3.41 V/μm, while the estimated field enhancement factor increases from 405 to 723 with increasing the ambient temperature from room temperature to 573 K. The field enhancement factor, emission current density, and the dependence of the effective work function with temperature have been investigated, and we have tried to explain the temperature-dependent emission mechanism.

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