Carbon-Nanotubes for Full-Color Field-Emission Displays

A 4.5-inch fully sealed carbon-nanotube field-emission display with a 200-µm narrow gap was fabricated on glass using paste squeezing and surface rubbing techniques. The fabricated displays were fully scalable at low temperatures below 415°C and showed very high luminance of 1800 cd/m2 at 4 V/µm. The degradation of emission currents for single-wall carbon nanotubes was less than 10% in electrical aging tests. Large field-enhancement factors and low turn-on voltages (1.5–3 V/µm) were attributed to well-aligned carbon nanotubes on substrates and a large number density of carbon nanotubes of 5–10/µm2, which was confirmed by high-resolution electron microscopy. Although localized states exist for various tip morphologies, which was calculated by density-functional tight-binding calculations, the contribution from such states was found to be negligible.