Feasibility of inkjet printing for field electron emitter fabrication

We demonstrated the field electron emission from the carbon black prepared using an inkjet printer. The measurement of field emission characteristic was carried out under the vacuum less than 5×10^-5 Pa using a diode configuration. A phosphor screen was used as the anode to visualize the electron emission points. The gap between the emitter and the anode was 25 micron, which was achieved by inserting polyimide sheet having 10×10 mm² window. It was found that field emission current was obtained from the patterned carbon black dots with fairly stable emission rate. Inkjet technology is expected to facilitate the progress of developing large area FEDs.