Journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University

Enhancing Field Emission Properties of Printed Carbon Nanotube Films by Mechanical Crushing Treatment
Zeng Fanguang, Zhu Changchun, Liu Xinghui, Liu Weihua
(School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China)

Abstract: A novel post-treatment method was presented to improve the field emission properties of printed carbon nanotube (CNTs) films. In this method, the mechanical pressure was applied through a flexible isolating layer to crush the inorganic materials attached to the CNTs surface, and the high-speed airstream blowing was used to clean up these chippings. The advantage of the method is that it can neither leave any residue on the surface of the treated films nor damage the CNTs film. Compared with the un-treated film, the turn-on electric field of the treated film decreases from 2.7 V／μm to 1.7 V／μm, and the emission current of the treated film that has the same printing area as the un-treated one increases from 70 μA to 950 μA. This result indicates that mechanical crushing and blowing method has distinct effect to improve the field emission properties of printed CNTs films. This method has better utility value than that of other methods in the fabrication of CNTs field emission display.
Keywords: screen-printing; carbon nanotube film; field emission; post-treatment; field emission display