Electrophoresis deposition and field emission characteristics of planar-gate-type electron source with carbon nanotubes

An electrophoretic process was developed to selectively assemble carbon nanotubes (CNTs) onto the triode structure and a CNT-based planar-gate-type electron source panel of planar gate stripe was successfully fabricated with the special electrophoretic process. In this process, the CNTs were migrated on cathode electrode in the CNT suspension by an applied voltage between the gate electrode and cathode electrode. The applied voltage was also used to keep the CNTs off adsorbing on the gate electrode. The experiment results show that the CNTs are selectively defined onto cathode electrode and each cathode electrode has the same packing density. In addition, field emission characteristics of the planar-gate-type electron source panel were studied. The anode current densities could be modified from 0 to 216 μA/cm2 by increasing the gate voltages from 0 to 150 V with anode bias of 1400 V for anode–cathode spacing was 500 μm.