Controlled growth and field emission of vertically aligned AlN nanostructures with different morphologies

The controllable growth of three different morphologies of AlN nanostructures (nanorod, nanotip and nanocrater) arrays are successfully realized by using chemical vapour deposition (CVD) technology. All three nanostructures are of single crystal h-AlN with a growth orientation of 001. Their growth is attributed to the vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism. To investigate the factors affecting field emission (FE) properties of AlN nanostructures, we compare their FE behaviours in several aspects. Experimental results show that AlN nanocrater arrays possess the best FE properties, such as a threshold field of 7.2~V/μm and an emission current fluctuation lower than 4%. Moreover, the three AlN nanostructures all have good field emission properties compared with a number of other excellent cathode nanomaterials, which suggests that they are future promising FE nanomaterials.