Electron field emission from amorphous carbon with N-doped nanostructures pyrolyzed from polyaniline

Carbon-based materials have been of great interest due to their potential application in cold cathodes for field emission displays and other vacuum microelectronic devices. Pyrolyzed polyaniline (PPANI) with N-doped nanostructures was prepared by pyrolysis of polyaniline at high temperature of 900 °C. The morphologies and microstructures were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, AFM, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It was found that there were sp2C-N and sp3C-N bonds between the nitrogen and the carbon atoms in the nanostructures of the PPANI obtained. The electron field emission investigations showed that the turn-on field and effective work function ϕe of PPANI were 1.7 V/μm and 0.010 eV which were lower than N-doped amorphous carbon films obtained by other methods.