Correlation between the saturation of emission current and defect co-ordination number for irradiated aligned multiwalled carbon nanotubes

Low energy Ar+ ion irradiation of aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube and in situ field emission measurement revealed deterioration of field emission current density with the energy of incident ions for high dose irradiation. Defect co-ordination number, calculated through Molecular Dynamics simulations increases for the low energy and finally saturates. The saturation of emission current density follows the same pattern as the defect co-ordination number varies with the energy of the incident ion. Interestingly, both the curves saturate at exactly same energy of Ar+ ions which establishes a correlation between the saturation of emission current density and defect co-ordination number.