Controlled growth and field emission of vertically aligned AlN nanostructures with different morphologies

The controllable growth of three different morphologies of AlNnanostructures (nanorod, nanotip and nanocrater) arrays aresuccessfully realized by using chemical vapour deposition (CVD)technology. All three nanostructures are of single crystal h-AlNwith a growth orientation of [001]. Their growth is attributed tothe vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism. To investigate the factorsaffecting field emission (FE) properties of AlN nanostructures, wecompare their FE behaviours in several aspects. Experimental resultsshow that AlN nanocrater arrays possess the best FE properties, suchas a threshold field of 7.2~V/$mu $m and an emission currentfluctuation lower than 4{%}. Moreover, the three AlN nanostructuresall have good field emission properties compared with a number ofother excellent cathode nanomaterials, which suggests that they arefuture promising FE nanomaterials.