Carbon nanotube technology for solid state and vacuum electronics

The authors demonstrate the fabrication of solid state and vacuum electronic devices using carbon nanotubes as the active channel and emitters. Single wall and multiwall carbon nanotubes (CNT) are deposited directly on substrates using chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD), respectively. The fabrication of top gate and side gate field effect transistors is demonstrated using single wall CNTs. Vertically aligned multiwall CNTs are used to fabricate field emitter arrays or micro-gated field emitters, which have potential application in field emission displays, microwave amplifiers or electron guns.