Influence of NiO ALD Coatings on the Field Emission Characteristic of CNT Arrays

Maksim A Chumak; Leonid A Filatov; Ilya S Ezhov; Anatoly G Kolosko; Sergey V Filippov; Eugeni O Popov; Maxim Yu Maximov

doi:10.3390/nano12193463

Influence of NiO ALD Coatings on the Field Emission Characteristic of CNT Arrays

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Oct 4;12(19):3463. doi: 10.3390/nano12193463.

Authors

Maksim A Chumak¹, Leonid A Filatov¹, Ilya S Ezhov¹, Anatoly G Kolosko², Sergey V Filippov², Eugeni O Popov², Maxim Yu Maximov¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Metallurgy of Mechanical Engineering and Transport, Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University, st. Politekhnicheskaya, 29, 195251 St. Petersburg, Russia.
² Cyclotron Laboratory, Ioffe Institute, st. Politekhnicheskaya, 26, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia.

Abstract

The paper presents a study of a large-area field emitter based on a composite of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes covered with a continuous and conformal layer of nickel oxide by the atomic layer deposition method. The arrays of carbon nanotubes were grown by direct current plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition on a pure Si substrate using a nickel oxide catalyst which was also deposited by atomic layer deposition. The emission characteristics of an array of pure vertically oriented carbon nanotubes with a structure identical in morphology, covered with a layer of thin nickel oxide, are compared using the data from a unique computerized field emission projector. The deposition of an oxide coating favorably affected the emission current fluctuations, reducing them from 40% to 15% for a pristine carbon nanotube and carbon nanotube/nickel oxide, respectively. However, the 7.5 nm nickel oxide layer coating leads to an increase in the turn-on field from 6.2 to 9.7 V/µm.

Keywords: atomic layer deposition (ALD); carbon nanotubes; composite structures; direct current plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (DC-PECVD); field emission cathode; thin film structures.

Grants and funding

Authors M. Maximov and I. Ezhov thank the strategic academic leadership program ‘Priority 2030’ of the Russian Federation (Agreement 075-15-2021-1333 dated 30 September 2021) for partial financial support of the work.