A Modified Tape Pretreatment Process for Enhanced Field Emission Cold Cathode

The field emission phenomenon is surface sensitive, and the tape pretreatment method has been commonly used to improve the disordered surface morphology of cathodes to boost the field emission performance. However, there are few reports on detailed surface investigations of tape pretreatment. In this study, we initially investigate the stickiness variation of the tape and the most suitable preprocessing times for improved field emission performance and then utilize multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)/silicon carbide (SiC) composites as cathodes to thoroughly investigate the compound ratio to reduce the serious shielding effect and to maintain a proper field emission density. A nonmonotonic relationship between the turn-on field and cathode composite ratio is found. In addition, the luminance and luminance uniformity for the field emission devices of the MWCNTs/SiC composites prove the enhanced field emission properties of the MWCNTs/SiC composites with proper tape pretreatment times, demonstrating potential applications in vacuum electronic devices.