Zinc Oxide Nanowire Lateral Field Emission Devices and its Application as Display Pixel Structures

The rational design and fabrication of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire (NW) lateral field electron emission device and the possible application as a display pixel structure are reported. In the device, the cathode and anode are ranked side-by-side on the same panel. The NW-clusters were controlled to locally grow on the edges of the electrodes with different tilted status, i.e., in angle range of 75°-110°, 0°-110°, and 0°-57°, respectively. The devices with NWs at different tilt-angle showed distinct field electron emission properties. The device with 0°-57° tilted NWs possess the best performance, i.e., an emission current of 9.3 μA (current density: 6.22 A/cm²) was obtained at a low cathode-anode (50 μm in separation) bias of 477 V. Stable cathodoluminescence was observed from the indium titanic oxide anode, suggests a possibility for display application. Mechanisms responsible for the enhanced field electron emission and the related device physics are proposed. Significantly, the low temperature (~ 80°C) solution-phase growth of ZnO NWs enables the fabrication of the devices on flexible polyimide substrate, which has also been demonstrated here. This paper opens up possibilities on developing NW-based lateral field electron emission device for vacuum micro/nanoelectronics applications.