Review of Field Emission from Carbon Nanotubes: Highlighting Measuring Energy Spread

This paper is a review of the research on field emission properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), the basic properties of CNTs, the main emission properties with highlighting in energy spread and the work done in applying CNTs for field emission microscopy (FEM). In this work there are explanations about the density of states (DOS) of the conduction electrons responsible for the emission; comparison of the characteristics of CNTs emission from single nanotube or films; comparison of the different types of electron sources and the introduction of CNTs electron sources applying in retarding field analyzer (RFA).