Investigation of the temperature dependence of the field emission of ZnO nanorods

Abstract

Temperature-dependent field emission characteristics of ZnO nanorods are reported in this study. The work function of ZnO nanorods is notably reduced with the temperature increasing from 100 to 600 K. The electron emission properties of ZnO nanorods are very sensitive to temperature. The turn-on field decreases significantly from 7.5 to 1.9 V µm−1, while the emission current increases remarkably with the increasing temperature. Moreover, the real-time images (recorded by CCD camera) of field emission from ZnO nanorods support the above I–V results. The strongly thermo-enhanced emission of ZnO nanorods suggests that the increasing temperature could significantly excite the electrons on the defect-dependent donor levels into a vacuum through a narrowed tunnel by an applied electric field.

Fabrication of vertically aligned single-crystalline lanthanum hexaboride nanowire arrays and investigation of their field emission

“…For example, temperature-dependent field-electron emission [17][18][19][20] can provide deep insight into the physical properties of a nanostructure, reveal the relationship between the electron emission characteristics and different temperature conditions, and allow the investigator to understand the direct thermal electric conversion. Recently, extensive efforts have been devoted to a study of temperature-dependent FE of CNTs, 20,21 ZnO nanowires, 17 AlN nanotips, 5 graphene films 19 and SiC nanostructures. 18 All of the authors obtained similar results: both the turn-on and threshold electric fields decreased with increasing temperature.…”

Room temperature ferromagnetism in Mn-doped zinc oxide nanorods prepared by hybrid wet chemical route

“…Currently, capability of depositing ZnO in different configurations [14][15][16] e.g. nanorods, nanobelts, nanowires (NWs), nanoneedles, nanotetrapods and nanocombs have been reported.…”

Ultra-low turn-on field from ultra-long ZnO nanowire arrays emitters

“…3. All the scattering peaks except for 520 cm −1 (belonging to Si-Si scattering) can be well indexed to pure 1-D ZnO arrays [26,27]. The dominant peak at 439 cm −1 is attributed to ZnO non-polar optical phonons high E 2 mode.…”