Abstract
We describe a technique for the fabrication of individual carbon nanotube electron field emitters on silicon substrates, with well-defined tunneling geometries and robust metal contacts. The suspended nanotube emitters have been produced by edge lithography on cleaved silicon substrate in conjunction with edge etching. The I-V curves acquired from the resulting emitters followed the Fowler-Nordheim law and exhibited a low operating voltage in a short cathode-anode distance. The extracted field enhancement factors were an order of magnitude higher than those obtained in an electron microscope but in good agreement with those reported in large-area measurements. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.