CNT-FED architecture based on a gate electrode of diabolo mode

Recently, the Carbon Nanotube Field Emission Display has drawn more and more concern. With its excellent image display quality and low fabrication expense, the printable CNT-FED will take the place of cathode ray tube as the major consumer-priced and mass-market display. A normal CNT-FED device is composed of the CNT cathode, the gate electrode, the anode and dielectric insulator layers, etc. as shown in Fig. 1. The gate electrode in CNT-FED is used to modulate and address the electron beam. Because some electrons may be collected by the gate electrode in a triode, the brightness of the image is decreased. This paper proposes a novel gate structure fabricated on a glass plate with diabolo funnels. Chemical corrosion was utilized to produce diabolo funnels in the glass dielectric layer and HF with the 40% concentration with sulfuric acid is used. A metal layer was screen-printed on the lower surface of the glass-mesh plate as an electron extraction gate electrode. MgO film was vaporized on the surface of the diabolo funnels. The electrons from CNT are transported in a diabolo mode via secondary electron emission over the wall of the diabolo funnel placed above the sub emitters. As a result, many electrons including the secondary electrons and backscatters are generated and the brightness of the diabolo mode gate structure CNT-FED could increase obviously. In the paper, we give the results of numerical simulation of the secondary electron emission process with Monte Carlo method. In this paper, we also study the influence of a MgO layer on the surface of the diabolo funnel. Figure.2 and Fig.3 give the comparison between a bare glass diabolo funnel and a MgO layer is coated on the surface of the funnel. As the simulation results and experiment results shown, the triode structure in which a MgO layer is vaporized on the surface of the funnel can get higher brightness.