Abstract Submitted to the NANOTUBE'02 Workshop:

We have successfully grown the carbon nanotube (CNT) films using a novel catalyst of PdSe alloy and characterized the emission properties. The PdSe alloy thin films were deposited by thermal evaporation in vacuum. The Se films with a thickness of 10nm were deposited on Si, and subsequently the Pd films were deposited with changing thicknesses from 5 to 50nm. The CNT films were grown by thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD). A gaseous mixture of acetylene (20%) and helium (80%) was introduced into the quartz reactor as source gas with 15sccm. The CVD was performed at the substrate temperature of 600^oC. The CNT was randomly oriented, and the average diameter was about 8nm. The threshold electric field with an emission current density of 1mA/cm² was 1.1V/mm. It was better than the result of 3.8V/mm in the case of using FeNi catalyst. The difference in the emission characteristic will be discussed. This work was performed with Japan Fine Ceramic Center under the Frontier Carbon Technology Project of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.