Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have high aspect ratio and have great potential to be applied as the field emission cathode because of its large field enhancement factor. In this work, a high performance carbon nanotube field emission cathode (CNTFC) was fabricated by using a composite plating method. The CNTs were purified by acid solutions and then dispersed in electrobath with nickel ions at temperatures of 60, 70, or 80 degrees C for the electroless plating process on glass substrate. The resulting CNT-Ni composite film has strong adhesion on the glass substrate. The degree of graphitization and the microstructure of the CNTFCs were studied by Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The field emission properties of the CNTFCs show a low turn-on electric field E(on) of about 1.2 V/microm, and a low threshold electric field E(th) of about 1.9 V/microm. Such a composite plating method could be applied to the fabrication of large area CNT field-emission displays.