A self-aligned single carbon nanotube field emission source fabricated by UV lithography

We suggest a novel process for fabricating a carbon nanotube field emission source having one carbon nanotube per gate aperture. The fabrication is based on UV lithography, instead of electron beam lithography. We used only one patterning step to define the gate, insulator, and cathode. We applied a DC voltage to the anode and a pulse signal to the gate. We then investigated the I-V characteristics of the structure, changing the frequency and the duty-cycle of the pulse signal applied to the gate. We found that the optimum frequency and duty-cycle were 250 kHz and 22%, respectively. The structure had a turn-on voltage of 1.1 V under these conditions. The anode voltage did not have much effect. Finally, we checked the stability of the source for 40 h. We obtained an average emission current of 1.093 µA with a standard deviation of 1.019 × 10(-2) µA.