Patterned growth of carbon nanotubes over vertically aligned silicon nanowire bundles for achieving uniform field emission

Yung-Jr Hung; Yung-Jui Huang; Hsuan-Chen Chang; Kuei-Yi Lee; San-Liang Lee

doi:10.1186/1556-276X-9-540

Patterned growth of carbon nanotubes over vertically aligned silicon nanowire bundles for achieving uniform field emission

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2014 Oct 1;9(1):540. doi: 10.1186/1556-276X-9-540. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Yung-Jr Hung¹, Yung-Jui Huang², Hsuan-Chen Chang², Kuei-Yi Lee², San-Liang Lee²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Photonics, National Sun Yat-sen University, No. 70, Lienhai Rd., Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan.
² Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No. 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Taipei 106, Taiwan.

Abstract

A fabrication strategy is proposed to enable precise coverage of as-grown carbon nanotube (CNT) mats atop vertically aligned silicon nanowire (VA-SiNW) bundles in order to realize a uniform bundle array of CNT-SiNW heterojunctions over a large sample area. No obvious electrical degradation of as-fabricated SiNWs is observed according to the measured current-voltage characteristic of a two-terminal single-nanowire device. Bundle arrangement of CNT-SiNW heterojunctions is optimized to relax the electrostatic screening effect and to maximize the field enhancement factor. As a result, superior field emission performance and relatively stable emission current over 12 h is obtained. A bright and uniform fluorescent radiation is observed from CNT-SiNW-based field emitters regardless of its bundle periodicity, verifying the existence of high-density and efficient field emitters on the proposed CNT-SiNW bundle arrays.

Keywords: Carbon nanotube; Electrostatic screening effect; Field emission; Metal-induced chemical etching; Silicon nanowire.