Modeling the Field Emission Current Fluctuation in Carbon Nanotube Thin Films

TL;DR

This paper presents a multiphysics model for analyzing the variability in field emission current from randomly oriented carbon nanotube thin films, integrating emission physics, electron transport, and mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled, time-incremental computational model that simulates the behavior of CNTs in thin films for improved device performance analysis.

Findings

Model captures emission current fluctuations

Provides insights into variability sources

Enhances design of CNT-based field emitters

Abstract

Owing to their distinct properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have emerged as promising candidate for field emission devices. It has been found experimentally that the results related to the field emission performance show variability. The design of an efficient field emitting device requires the analysis of the variabilities with a systematic and multiphysics based modeling approach. In this paper, we develop a model of randomly oriented CNTs in a thin film by coupling the field emission phenomena, the electron-phonon transport and the mechanics of single isolated CNT. A computational scheme is developed by which the states of CNTs are updated in time incremental manner. The device current is calculated by using Fowler-Nordheim equation for field emission to study the performance at the device scale.