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The aim of this work is to produce a manufacturing strategy for high current (>10 mA) field emission (FE) devices for military (microwave generation) and civilian (particle accelerator electron beam) applications using carbon nanotubes (CNT) as base material. With a particular focus on the relationship of the laser time pulse duration used for cutting CNTs and how this affects the field emission performance. Material selection for this work was narrowed to CNT as they possess unique characteristics such as: high aspect ratio; high thermal conductivity; high chemical stability and high current carrying capacities up to a theoretical limit of 1,200 MA∙cm-1 making them an ideal material for FE. The CNT material studied in this work is produced in two distinct forms, fibres (∅~7-10 μm) and films (h~30 μm), using a floating catalyst chemical vapour deposition process which produces high quantities of CNT material with mixed mechanical and electrical properties. The material is difficult to handle because of its dimensions and is susceptible to environmental changes i.e. electrostatic forces. In order to reduce the variability in electrical properties, a laser purification process was developed. The process consists of locally irradiating an infra-red (IR) laser several microseconds directly at the material. A percentage is vaporised (mainly non-conductive or defective material) and the remaining CNT material shows very high crystallinity with an increase of up to ten times (G/D ratio > 100) compared to the original material and electron mean free path is increased by an order of magnitude. The production strategy is based on directly coating the CNT material with copper using an electroplating process. This allowed for CNT fibre and film to be easily handled and improved the overall electrical contact. Emitter geometry was customised by a laser cutting process to achieve increased enhancement factor geometries, in this case, triangles with 29 tips whilst reducing FE variability. FE performance was quantified by testing the devices in a continuous DC mode with a sweep up to 1,000 V until the material suffered catastrophic failure. The gap distance between the tip of the triangles and the anode was varied to increase the electric field until failure. FE results using the production strategy improved more than 400% compared to untreated material. Applications for these devices are intended to be in the creation of high energy electron beam lines and generation of high powered directed microwaves.

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The research area of magnetic field effects (MFE) on organic systems has been intensively studied during the last decade. It has been revealed that there are processes that are subject to low fields (< 50 mT) and processes that are subject to high fields (> 50 mT). While the low field processes are widely accepted to be a result of the suppression of the spin mixing caused by random hyperfine fields and spin-orbit coupling within the devices, the origin of the high field processes is still not clear. Although several mechanisms, like triplet-charge carrier interaction (TCI) and triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA), were proposed to explain the high field MFEs, how these processes are affected by a magnetic field is not well understood. This thesis presents a study of the role of excitons on MFEs using aluminium tris(8-hydroxyquinolinate) (Alq3) based diodes, focusing on the behaviour of high field effects on electroluminescence (MEL). In order to investigate the role of excitons on high field MEL, devices with different structures were designed to modify the population of exciton and excess charge carriers in the devices via controlling the injection of charge carriers. In this way, the exciton population dependent TTA and TCI processes can be studied further and even distinguished, since the TTA depends mainly on the population of triplets while the TCI depends on the exciton to charge carrier ratio. Steady state MFE measurements were performed, and results show that significant high field MEL decay can be seen in a device with extremely low triplet concentration. This indicates that TTA cannot be the underlying mechanism of high field MEL decay. The gradual trend of high field MEL, changing from a moderate increase to significant decays upon adjusting the hole and electron injection from balanced to severely hole dominated, suggests that this high field decay is exciton-hole interaction dependent. To decompose the role of singlets and triplets on high MELs, transient MFE measurements were performed on the Alq3 based standard devices. Since in Alq3 layer singlets feature a lifetime of ~ns and triplets feature a lifetime of ~ms, the behaviour of MEL at the rising edge and the falling edge of a pulse can provide a useful tool. Results show that an extra component occurs in the transient MEL at large current density and high fields. This indicates that the high field MEL is related to triplet-charge carrier interaction.

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Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries