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Electron emission from carbon nanotubes

University of British Columbia

In this thesis, I will provide an overview of the subject from various experimental and theoretical angles with an emphasis on the limited number of theoretical works that exist in calculating the emission current. I will then present a first-principles calculation of the emission current in a single-walled carbon nanotube using the non-equilibrium Green's function and Fisher-Lee's transmission formulation to describe electronic transport through the system. The simulation results reproduce the trends observed in experimental data closely and, in particular, the current saturation behavior observed in experiments and the deviation from the Fowler-Nordheim behavior. The proposed numerical approach is useful whenever a region of vacuum is present in the device Hamiltonian, which existing commercial transport solvers do not model. To better characterize nanotube electron sources, I have also done some preliminary experimental work, which has involved building equipments and developing recipes for growing carbon nanotubes.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-04-15

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7112

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/