Growth, characterizations and field emission properties of one-dimensional nanostructures

Abstract

Several 1D metal oxide nanostructures, including CuO nanowires, I?-Fe2O3 nanoflakes and ZnO/CuO nanohybrids have been synthesized simply by oxidizing corresponding metal plates on a hotplate in ambience. With various characterization methods, these 1D nanostructures were found to have uniform morphologies, single crystalline structures and stoichiometric chemical compositions. Based on the field emission studies of as-grown 1D nanostructure films, large emission currents and low turn-on fields have been obtained. Furthermore, emission uniformity, work function, emission characteristics of a small number of emitters and effect of vacuum gap have been investigated on the basis of different systems.Laser pruning and plasma etching were employed to treat as-grown carbon nanotubes and CuO nanowires for further improvement of field emission properties. It has been found that laser pruning reduced the screening effect of carbon nanotubes and plasma treatment could functionalize the surface morphology, microstructure and chemical environments, contributing to the enhanced emission.