Enhanced electron field emission from carbon nanotubes irradiated by energetic C ions

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted great enthusiasm among the researchers since they were found firstly by lijima in1991[1]. Due to their unique physical and chemical properties, CNTs have a lots of potential applications in many important fields, such as nanoelectronic devicse, super-hard materials, energy storages, electron emitters and opto-sensors. Among their applications, because of their high-aspect ratio, excellent electrical and mechanical property, CNT is a potential candidate as the next-generation field electron emitters. The first report about the field emission characteristics of a single multi-walled CNT is conducted by Rinzler et al in 1995[2]. And in the passed nearly ten years, field emission investigation has become one of the biggest concerned subjects in CNTs world. How to enhance the field emission properties of CNTs further by reducing their work function and improving their structure is an important problem. In this paper, we report the investigation on the electron field emission enhancement from carbon nanotubes irradiated by energetic C ions.