Stable Field Emission from Single-Crystalline Zirconium Carbide Nanowires
The <100> oriented single-crystalline Zirconium Carbide (ZrC) nanowires were controllably synthesized on a graphite substrate by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with optimized growth parameters involving Zirconium tetrachloride (ZrCl<sub>4</sub>), flow of methane (CH<sub>4</sub>), and growth temperature. The length of nanowires is above 10 µm while the diameter is smaller than 100 nm. A single ZrC nanowire was picked up and fixed on a tungsten tip for field emission measurement. After surface pretreatments, a sharpened and cleaned ZrC nanowire emitter showed a high emission current density of 1.1 × 10<sup>10</sup> A m<sup>-2</sup> at a low turn-on voltage of 440 V. The field emission is stable for 150 min with a fluctuation of 1.77%. This work provides an effective method for synthesizing and stabilizing single-crystalline ZrC nanowire emitters as an electron source for electron-beam applications.
Authors
- Junwang Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2323-5510)
- You-Hu Chen
- Masaki Takeguchi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0282-6020)
- Shuai Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0086-9104)
- Yimeng Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9780-8203)
- Ta-Wei Chiu
- Lu-Chang Qin
Institutions
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- University of Tsukuba (JP)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- National Institute for Materials Science (JP)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nanomaterials
- Published
- 2024-09-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/nano14191567
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Semiconductor materials and devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.42
Funders
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- National Institute for Materials Science