Carbon nanotube pastes for field emission prepared by adding metallic and oxide nanoparticle fillers

The CNT paste, to be screen-printed for field emission applications, should satisfy many stringent requirements such as CNT dispersion, surface uniformity, paste adhesion to a substrate, CNT adhesion in the paste, low outgassing rate in vacuum, printability, long shelf lifetime, etc. In our previous study, the CNT paste fabricated by using TiO₂ and SnO₂ powders as fillers showed good dispersion of the CNTs and fillers but poor adhesion to the substrate. We replaced the oxide fillers with metallic Ni powders to improve the adhesion of the CNT paste. This study optimizes the CNT paste in terms of dispersion and adhesion by adding an adequate amount of nm-sized Ni powder fillers.