Carbon clusters produced by electric arc evaporation of graphite and their field emission characteristics

Carbon clusters, for example nanotubes, are interesting as field emitters because of it have small radius of curvature and sufficient height. Therefore factor of field amplification can allows getting the field emission from these formations at small voltage. Fullerenes, carbon clusters and particularly nanotubes are self-organizing structures, which basically permit on a completely new basis to create the field emission arrays. It was shown also that fullerene structures and nanotubes carbon cluster films have an electronic work function that is substantially lower that for graphite. These properties of the fullerene structure and nanotubes are of interest both for fundamental research into the emission mechanism and surface properties and for applied research into their possible utilization as efficient field emission cathodes in vacuum microelectronics.