Laser pulse assisted field emission of aligned carbon nanotubes

We explored the impact of infrared light pulses on the field emission performances of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Carbon nanotubes, which were multiwalled CNTs with the length of 6-10μm and diameter of 20-40nm, synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to serve as field emission cathodes. The power of infrared light pulse was 1W laser pulse with the wavelength of 1.06μm. The field emission performances of CNTs had remarkable change when optical field assisted the electric field. Irradiating the tip of CNTs with infrared laser pulses leads to pulsed field emission. The result showed the electron emission pulse was under the laser field control, which was a first step in our lab to explore for ultrashort laser pulse to meet the requirement of high-power and high-frequency electron sources.