Excellent field emission from carbon nanotubes grown by microwave-heated chemical vapor deposition

摘要

We have developed a microwave-heated chemical vapor deposition process for growth of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) utilizing a SiC susceptor to absorb microwave energy, heating the substrate much faster than conventional means. Such a process possesses good scaling-up capability to large area deposition with excellent uniformity. Among the growth parameters encountered in this process, the catalyst preparation and the microwave power are very crucial in controlling the morphology and the physical dimension of CNTs, thus affecting their field-emission characteristics. This paper presents our efforts in studying the effect of Ni layer thickness and applied microwave power on the field-emission properties of CNTs grown by the microwave-heated CVD (MH-CVD) process.