ABSTRACT
Recently, much effort has been devoted to fabricate carbon nanotubes (CNTs)- based field emission display, as a very promising, low-energy and cheap electronic device of the 21st century (Bonard et al. 2001, Choi et al. 2001, Kim et al. 2000, Murakami et al. 2000, Saito et al. 2000). Due to the CNTs' extreme properties, like high aspect ratio, good electrical and thermal conductivity, high melting point and mechanical strength, and also low chemical reactivity, they seem to be a very promising and ideal material for devices based on cold electron emission. In the near future, great effort needs to be made to develop mass production technology for efficient and stable carbon nanotubes cold electron field emission sources. It is also important to develop other, additional physical and/or chemical methods that would improve the emission properties of carbon nanotubes while reducing the currently applied high bias. The present paper describes an attempt at improving the emission properties of multi walled CNTs (MWCNTs) film by annealing it in a UHV system and in situ in an hydrogen or ethylene atmosphere.
