Synthesize carbon nanotube field emitters by local heating chemical vapor deposition

The effects of growth time on synthesizing of carbon nanotubes were reported. Prepared different forms of carbon nanotubes on silicon substrates by local heating chemical vapor deposition. The results showed that most of carbon nanotubes grew out with small diameter (60-80nm) and thinner in the case of short growth time (30s); when the growth time increased to 10 min or even longer, most of carbon nanotubes had large diameter(over 500nm) and there were many small CNTs attached to the wall of big carbon nanotubes; long growth time (10min) carbon nanotubes had good performance on field emission current and stability, but the shorter growth time (30s) one was much worse.