An Experimental Study and Modeling of the Field Emission Properties of an Isolated Individual Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube

This paper reports experimental data for individual multi-walled CNT (MWNT) emitters. For comparison, a thermodynamics-based variational method was used to obtain a closed-form expression for the radial electric field of a spherical cathode. Theoretical data generated from Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) device simulation software is also reported. A fundamental understanding of the individual CNT emitter has important ramifications for electron microscope applications. Developing theoretical models for nanotube field emission properties using a thermodynamics-based variational approach (Gunther et al., 2004) as well as TCAD (Smith et al., 2005) would provide design rules for optimizing carbon nanotube film emitters for various applications