Near-Field Calibration of Isolated Carbon Nanotube Field Emitters for Nanomanufacturing Applications

This paper reports the development of an apparatus, technique, and method for calibrating the field emission phenomena’s dependence on both the voltage applied between the anode and cathode and the electrodes gap. A precise knowledge of the electrodes gap is required for calibrating field emitters. The I-V characteristic of isolated carbon nanotube field emitter is a strong function of the electrodes gap distance. A consolidated IV curve is obtained by calculating the current density and the local electric field with the field enhancement factor taken into consideration. The field enhancement factor and emitting area are unique for each electrodes gap distance. We also found that the turn-on voltage decreases as the electrodes gap distance decreases.