Optimization for field emission from carbon nanotubes array in hexagon

In order to investigate the influence of the arrangement of the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) array on the field emission, the more practical model in hexagon was proposed. From the calculation with the image floated sphere model, the results showed that the arrangement has little influence on the field emission and the intertube distance R of CNTs array critically affects the field emission from the CNTs array, which accords with the results from the numerical simulations and experiments. When R is less than the height of tube h, the enhancement factor decreases rapidly with R. Considering the field emission current density, the field emission can be optimized when R is comparable with h, which accorded with the results from experiments. Furthermore, the influence of the anode–cathode distance d on the field emission from CNTs array was also discussed, which proved that d has little effect on the field emission from CNTs array. For the fixed field strength E for the certain materials in filed emission, we can reduce the threshold voltage to some extent by decreasing d in the case of R > 2h.