Field Emission Characteristics of Contact Printed Graphene Fins

Carbon nanostructures have been much sought after for cold-cathode field emission applications. Herein a printing technique is reported to controllably nanostructure chemical vapor deposited graphene into vertically standing fins. The method allows for the creation of regular arrays of bilayer graphene fins, with sharp ridges that, when printed onto gold electrodes, afford a new type of field emission electron source geometry. The approach affords tunable morphologies and excellent long term and cyclic stabilities. Free-standing bilayer graphene fins are created in a continuous sheet of chemical vapor deposition-grown graphene by a novel transfer printing method. The artificially created 3D structures can be patterned over centimetre areas. The method can be used to tailor the properties of monolayer materials. Here, the very sharp fins are shown exhibit good field emission properties including excellent static and cyclic stability.