In the field emitter array, there is a fringe field surrounding the emitter array. The fringe field and the interactive field between different tips will influence the emission uniformity of the emitter array. This paper studies the influences of the fringe field and the interactive field on the emission performance of a diode emitter array. The variations of the emission currents versus the width of the margin of the array are given. From these results, the influences of the fringe field on the emissions of the center tips and the corner tips are obtained. This paper also analyses the dependence of the fringe field and the interactive field on the cathode-anode distance and the tip-to-tip spacing.

In the design of a charged particle optical system, many geometrical and electric parameters have to be optimized to improve the performance characteristics. In every optimization cycle, the electromagnetic field and particle trajectories have to be calculated. Therefore, the optimization of a charged particle optical system is limited by the computer resources seriously. Apart from this, numerical errors of calculation may also influence the convergence of merit function. This article studies how to improve the optimization of charged particle optical systems. A new method is used to determine the gradient matrix. With this method, the accuracy of the Jacobian matrix can be improved. In this paper, the charged particle optical system is optimized with a Message Passing Interface (MPI). The electromagnetic field, particle trajectories and gradients of optimization variables are calculated on networks of workstations. Therefore, the speed of optimization has been increased largely. It is possible to design a complicated charged particle optical system with optimum quality on a MPI environment. Finally, an electron gun for a cathode ray tube has been optimized on a MPI environment to verify the method proposed in this paper.

The fabrication of carbon nanotube emitters with excellent emission properties is described. The multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) produced by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method were purified with oxidation method and mixed with organic binding pastes and then screen-printed on glass substrates with ITO film. We applied anode voltage gradually to refine the emission behavior of the emitter by cleaning the top surface of screen-printed carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The density of the carbon nanotubes is about 2:5 108/cm2. Diode field emission experiments were performed in dynamic vacuum system to study the emission current, the emission uniformity, etc. Bright and stable character emission images were obtained in the diode structure and the emission current could approach 1 mA/cm2.

The carbon nanotube has good field emission properties, so it has been used as the electron source on the field emission display panel. To obtain a high emission current, the electric field at the tip of the nanotube must be large enough. This article studies the variation of electric field with different types of nanotubes. The emission current of the nanotube is also calculated for various geometrical parameters of nanotubes. From the simulation results, the influence of the geometrical parameters on the emission performance of nanotubes is studied.