SBIR Phase II: Efficient Production of High Quality Carbon Nanotube Field Emitters

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project addresses scaled up production of high quality carbon nanotube (CNT) field emitters, which are promising electron sources that can potentially overcome the limitations of thermionic source based devices. The current commercially available CNTs have limitations in terms of field emission performance, thermal stability and cost. Xintek and its collaborators at Duke University developed a proprietary few walled carbon nanotubes (FWNTs) which is shown to possess superior field emission performance compared to other commercially available CNTs. Upon the successful completion of the Phase II project, the low cost high quality field emission FWNTs will be produced to deliver improved field emission performance for a broad range of applications including but not limited to field emission displays, X-ray sources, vacuum electronic devices, accelerator electron guns, and high current electron beam processing facilities.