Carbon Nanotubes Field Emission Diode

A fully integrated field emission diode (FED) using carbon nanotubes as electron field emitter was constructed. The device was designed and fabricated on a glass substrate by screen-printing thick film technique. The FED was operated at 100 V for giving a forward current density of 180 mA/cm2. A leakage current of 1 pA was measured then a 1000 V reverse voltage was applied, indicating that a high voltage blocking capability was obtained from such a device. From theoretical calculation and experimental results, the FED can be operated in megahertz due to very high speed of electrons traveling through them vacuum gap on forward operation and a small residue capacitance as well as minimum the reverse recovery time on reverse operation. The high performance of the novel FED was fabricated by a cost effective process combined with nanomaterials which opens up a route to produce miniaturized vacuum devices and new applications for such kind of the integrated vacuum microelectronic device.