Emission characteristics of printed carbon nanotube cathodes after laser treatment

Recently, field emission displays using printed carbon natiotubes (CNTs) as an emitter have been researched eagerly. By laser irradiation, some CNTs in the printed CNT layer stand out, And they work as the emission sites. We found that the higher CNTs that are easier to be the emission sites tend to exist at the boundary of the laser irradiation pattern. We used the irradiation patterns that consist of the arrays of microirradiation pattern to increase the total length of boundary. Both emission characteristics and emission uniformity were improved by the increase of the boundary length. We examined several lasers, and the irradiation by the second harmonic generation yttrium aluminum garnet laser of which wavelength was greatest in our experiment provided the best emission characteristics (turn-on electric field < 2 V/mu m) and emission uniformity (turn-on electric field deviation < 5%). (c) 2006 American Vacuum Society.