Electron emission from nano-structured carbon composite materials and fabrication of high-quality electron emitters by using plasma technology

Many trials have been done to fabricate high-quality electron-emitters from nano-composite carbon materials (such as nano-diamond, carbon nano tubes and others) by means of a variety of plasma chemical-vapor-deposition (CVD) techniques. Based upon the mechanism of electron emission, we have proposed several strategic guide lines for the fabrication of good emitters. Then, following these lines, several types of emitters were tried. One of the emitters has shown a worldclass, top ranking for fabricating very bright lamps: namely, a low turn-on voltage (0.5 ∼ 1 V/μm to induce 10 μA/cm² emission current) to emit a 1 mA/cm² current at 3 V/μm and 100 mA/cm² current at a slightly higher applied voltage. The bright lamps are Mercury-free fluorescence lamps to exhibit brightness of ∼10 ⁵ cd/m² with high efficiency of ∼100 lm/w.