AVS 50th International Symposium
    Nanotubes Wednesday Sessions
       Session NT-WeA

Paper NT-WeA3
Preparation and Field Emission Studies of Carbon Based Nanostructured Materials

Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 2:40 pm, Room 317

Session: Properties of Carbon Nanotubes
Presenter: X. Xiao, Argonne National Laboratory
Authors: X. Xiao, Argonne National Laboratory
O. Auciello, Argonne National Laboratory
J.E. Gerbi, Argonne National Laboratory
J. Wang, Argonne National Laboratory
J. Birrell, Argonne National Laboratory
J.A. Carlisle, Argonne National Laboratory
V.I. Merkulov, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
H. Cui, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
D.H. Lowndes, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Y. Wang, North Carolina State University
Correspondent: Click to Email
Four types of carbon based nanostructured materials were prepared, including nitrogen doped ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) films, UNCD on vertically aligned carbon nanofibers (VACNFs), carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and nanocomposite of UNCD/CNTs. Different methods were employed to characterize the nanostructures, such as scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and quadrupole mass spectrometry. The field electron emission properties of these carbon nanostructured materials in different ambients (O@sub 2@, Ar, N@sub 2@) were extensively studied and compared with each other. The experimental results show that the UNCD/VACNFs composite is a good field emitter with low threshold value for electron emission, good stability and long lifetime. The excellent field emission property of the composite is believed to be due to the combined effect from the negative electron affinity of UNCD and high aspect ratio of carbon nanofibers. CNTs, especially vertically aligned CNTs, can not stand long-time ion bombardment from the residual gas in the field emission process, and distortion of CNTs has been observed subsequently to electron emission measurements. Possible damage mechanism is discussed. We acknowledge support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science / Basic Energy Science-Materials Science, under Contract W-31-109-ENG-38.