Experimental and theoretical study on field emission properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles decorated carbon nanotubes

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/24/5/057102

Abstract Field emission properties of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) decorated carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are investigated experimentally and theoretically. CNTs are in situ decorated with ZnO NPs during the growth process by chemical vapor deposition using a carbon source from the iron phthalocyanine pyrolysis. The experimental field emission test shows that the ZnO NP decoration significantly improves the emission current from 50 μA to 275 μA at 550 V and the reduced threshold voltage from 450 V to 350 V. The field emission mechanism of ZnO NPs on CNTs is theoretically studied by the density functional theory (DFT) combined with the Penn–Plummer method. The ZnO NPs reconstruct the ZnO–CNT structure and pull down the surface barrier of the entire emitter system to 0.49 eV so as to reduce the threshold electric field. The simulation results suggest that the presence of ZnO NPs would increase the LDOS near the Fermi level and increase the emission current. The calculation results are consistent with the experiment results.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes (CNTs) ZnO field emission Penn–Plummer model

Received: 03 October 2014
Revised: 30 December 2014
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:	71.55.-i	(Impurity and defect levels)
	71.15.Mb	(Density functional theory, local density approximation, gradient and other corrections)
	73.23.Ad	(Ballistic transport)
	73.63.Fg	(Nanotubes)

Fund: Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 91123018, 61172040, and 61172041) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province, China (Grant No. 2014JM7277).

Corresponding Authors: Li Xin
E-mail: lx@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

About author: 71.55.-i; 71.15.Mb; 73.23.Ad; 73.63.Fg

Cite this article:

Li Xin (李昕), Zhou Wei-Man (周伟满), Liu Wei-Hua (刘卫华), Wang Xiao-Li (王小力) Experimental and theoretical study on field emission properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles decorated carbon nanotubes 2015 Chin. Phys. B 24 057102

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Experimental and theoretical study on field emission properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles decorated carbon nanotubes

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