Selective plasma etching treatment of the screen-printed carbon nanotube cold cathode

摘要

A high-precision printing and patterning carbon nanotube (CNT) cathode was prepared using the screen-printing method. Selective plasma etchings were introduced to improve field emission properties of the CNT cathode through the reactive ion etching (RIE) system. The field emission characteristics and mechanism of the cathode after etching treatment were studied. It was found that the reactive ion etching could effectively expose plentiful CNTs inside the cathode and protrude them from the surface. Moreover, with the increase of RIE operation pressure, CNT cathode field emission behavior changed from metal-insulation medium-vacuum (MIV) to a classical metallic-microprotrusion (MM) structure field emission model. The results showed that only the cathode with appropriate RIE operation pressure etching has a low operation field and a high emission current density.