SnO2 nanoribbons: excellent field-emitters

Nanoribbon structures have the feature of sharp edges, providing the marked geometrical field enhancement for field emitters even in a randomly arranged thin film structure. In this work, the field emission of SnO2 nanoribbons with thin walls (10–30 nm) prepared on a large scale via a rapid oxidation reaction is investigated. It is found that macroscopically, thin films made of SnO2 nanoribbons have an extremely low electron threshold field as low as 1.23 V μm−1. The SnO2 nanoribbon field emitter also exhibits excellent emission stability, with a degradation lower than 2.7% and a huge field enhancement factor as high as 2680. Furthermore, the emission current decrease slightly, while the stability remains excellent even for a poor vacuum of 10−4 Pa. These field emission properties of the present SnO2 nanoribbons surpass any other reported SnO2 nanostructures. This work opens the avenues for SnO2 nanoribbon structures as promising thin film field emitters.