Field Emission Characterization of MoS2 Nanoflowers

TL;DR

This study synthesizes MoS2 nanoflowers on copper foil and evaluates their field emission properties, demonstrating their potential as competitive, stable field emitters with low turn-on fields and high enhancement factors.

Contribution

It introduces a hydrothermal synthesis method for MoS2 nanoflowers and provides detailed characterization of their local field emission properties.

Findings

Turn-on field as low as 12 V/μm

Field enhancement factor up to 880

Stable emission from MoS2 nanoflowers

Abstract

Nanostructured materials have wide potential applicability as field emitters due to their high aspect ratio. We hydrothermally synthesized MoS2 nanoflowers on copper foil and characterized their field emission properties, by applying a tip-anode configuration in which a tungsten tip with curvature radius down to 30-100nm has been used as the anode to measure local properties from small areas down to 1-100um2. We demonstrate that MoS2 nanoflowers can be competitive with other well-established field emitters. Indeed, we show that a stable field emission current can be measured with a turn-on field as low as 12 V um-1 and a field enhancement factor up to 880 at 600nm cathode-anode separation distance.