Fabrication and field emission characteristics of surface-conduction electron-emission with ZnO nanorods based on planar-gate

Abstract

In this paper, surface-conduction field emission (SCFE) device based on planar-gate triode with in-situ grown ZnO nanorods as the emitter has been fabricated. The ZnO nanorods are controlled to orientable grow by thermal evaporation on a substrate, and their microstructures are analyzed through XRD and SEM. The results show that the one-dimensional ZnO nanorods were rod-shaped, up to 200 nm in diameter and approximately 15 μm in length. They are of oriental growth, uniform in size and perpendicular to the substrate. With the screen-printing, a planar-gate surface conduction device is fabricated, and its field emission characteristics are tested. The test results indicate that the threshold voltage of the planar-gate ZnO-SCFE device decreases with the increase of the anode voltage. When the gate voltage is 62 V, the electron emission efficiency of the device is 36.1%, higher than the reported surface emission display (SED) emission efficiency. Besides, the proposed device has good modulated effect and stability, indicating that it is of good field emission characteristics.