• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.90-95
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• 2008

We studied the effect of thermal annealing and hydrofluoric (HF) acid treatment on the field emission properties of carbon nanotube field emitter arrays (CNT-FEAs) grown with the resist-assisted patterning (RAP) process. After thermal and HF treatment, it was observed that the electron emission properties were remarkably improved. The enhanced electron emission was also found to depend strongly on the sequence of the treatments; the electronemission current density is 656 $mA/cm^2$ with the process of thermal treatment prior to HF treatment while the current density is reduced by 426 $mA/cm^2$ with the reversal processes. This is due to the increased crystalline structure by thermal annealing and then strong fluorine bond was formed by HF treatment.