Non-aligned arrays of zinc oxide nanowires: fabrication and field emission properties

In the search for a good field emitter to be used in future field emission displays (FEDs), we have fabricated arrays of zinc oxide nanowires (ZnO NWs) on silicon wafers by the method of thermal evaporation and then measured their field emission performance. When the fabrication conditions were properly controlled, randomly oriented ZnO NWs directly grew on the Si substrate and uniform field emission was attained from the whole sample surface.