Color Nanotube Field Emission Displays for HDTV

We demonstrate color video displays driven by carbon nanotube electron field emitters. These nanotubes are incorporated into the device by selective growth using low temperature chemical vapor deposition. The device structure is simple and inexpensive to fabricate, and a 45 V switching voltage enables the use of low cost driver electronics. The prototype units are sealed 4.6” diagonal displays with 726 um pixels. They represent a piece of a 42” diagonal 1280x720 high definition television. The carbon nanotube growth process is performed as the last processing step and creates nanotubes ready for field emission. No activation post-processing steps are required, so chemical and particulate contamination is not introduced. Control of the nanotube dimension, orientation, and spatial distribution during growth enables uniform, highquality, color video performance.