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Stability of electron field emission in Q-carbon

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Abstract

In this study, we have investigated electron field emission (EFE) characteristics of Q-carbon at room temperature and above. At room temperature the Q-carbon requires only ~2.4 V/μm electric field to turn-on the EFE. The EFE properties of the Q-carbon composite structure improve with temperature by lowering the turn-on field and increasing the current density. At 500 K we observed a turn-on field of ~2.34 V/μm, and a maximum current density was found to be ~53 µA/cm2 at 2.66 V/μm. The Q-carbon field emitters also show very stable EFE characteristics (within 7% fluctuations) overtime for current intensities between 7.5 and 47 µA/cm2.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Army Research Office (Grant No. W911NF-17-1-0596). This work used the analytical instrument facility (AIF) at North Carolina State University, which is supported by the State of North Carolina and National Science Foundation. We are very pleased to thank Lews Reynolds, Punam Pant and John Prater for the useful feedback. We also want to acknowledge the Fan Family Foundation Distinguished Chair Endowment for Professor J. Narayan.

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  1. Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695.7916, USA

    Ariful Haque & Jagdish Narayan

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  1. Ariful Haque
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Correspondence to Ariful Haque.

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The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2018.172.

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Haque, A., Narayan, J. Stability of electron field emission in Q-carbon. MRS Communications 8, 1343–1351 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2018.172

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