Fabrication of high performance carbon nanotube field emitters

We report a new fabrication process for high performance carbon nanotube field emitters. The key process of the fabrication method is trim-and-leveling the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) grown in trench structures by employing a polishing process, which leads to a uniform distance from the carbon nanotube tip to the electrode. In order to enable this processing, spin-on-glass liquid is applied over the CNTs to ensure strong adhesion to each other and to the substrate. The emitters thus fabricated revealed extremely stable current-voltage and aging characteristics. A sharp turn-on voltage of ∼ 1.7 V at 10 µA/cm2 was also observed. These high performances of the emitters are realized by the uniform distance between leveled emitter tips and the electrode and by the open tube tips achieved through the planarization process using spin-on-glass.