Fabrication and characterization of high current density carbon nanotube cold cathodes

In this paper, we report a recent experimental observation of high field-emission current density (6.5 A/cm/sup 2/) from carbon nanotube emitters. Our research shows that it is beneficial for getting the high current density in our experiment that Au film was deposited onto Si substrate before evaporating a Ni catalyst dot onto the substrate. We compared the field emission characteristics of CNTs cathodes grown on the Ni films with different thickness of 50, 70, 100 nm.