High performance field emission and Nottingham effect observed from carbon nanotube yarn

Abstract Vertically aligned CNTs were synthesized on a four inch wafer, followed by the preparation of a CNT yarn. The yarn emitter was found to have an extremely high field enhancement factor, which was confirmed to have originated from multi-stage effect. In addition to superb field emission characteristics, the energy exchange during field emission, called Nottingham effect, was observed from the CNT yarn emitter. A CNT yarn was attached to the thermistor whose resistance depends on temperature. Then, the change of resistance was monitored during the field emission, which enabled us to calculate the energy exchange. It was found that the observed heating originated from both Nottingham and Joule heating. Nottingham heating was dominant at low current region while Joule heating became larger contribution at high current region. Very large Nottingham region of up to 33.35 mA was obtained, which is due presumably to the high performance field emission characteristics of a CNT yarn. This is believed to be an important observation for developing reliable field emission devices with suppressed Joule heating effect.