Electron field emission from room temperature grown carbon nanofibers

The observation of field induced electron emission from room temperature grown carbon nanofibers at low ~5 V/mm! macroscopic electric fields is reported. The nanofibers were deposited using methane as a source gas in a conventional rf plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition reactor using a Ni metal catalyst previously subjected to an Ar plasma treatment. Analysis of the scanning electron microscopy images of the nanofibers show them to possess an average diameter of 300 nm and that the nanofibers are observed to be radially dispersed over an area of 50 mm in diameter. No evidence of hysteresis in the current-voltage characteristic or conditioning of the emitters is observed. The mechanism for emission at low fields is attributed to field enhancement at the tips rather than from the surrounding amorphous carbon film which is shown to have a higher threshold field ~20 V/mm! for emission. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1647261#