Performance enhancement of carbon nanotubes vacuum field emission triode amplifier by post-synthesis treatment

Compared to other field emitters, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have advantages of very high aspect ratio, small radius of curvature, lack of vacuum-arcing, low sputter yield, chemical inertness and thermal stability. In this study, we report the enhancement in field emission performance of CNTs triode amplifier by post-synthesis rapid thermal annealing (RTA) treatment. The post-synthesis annealing improves crystallinity and graphitization of the CNT microstructures, and has been proposed in the literature for reducing electrical contact resistance between CNTs-Si substrate, thereby enabling the device to be driven to high current density without current saturation. The CNT triode amplifier had a gate turn-on voltage of ∼ 20 V and achieved a high anode current density of ∼ 7 A/cm 2, without current saturation after the post-synthesis RTA.