Abstract Submitted to the    NANOTUBE'04 Conference:

Thermionic converters are an interesting option for lightweight and long-life power generators due to a number of compelling advantages, including all solid construction, no moving parts, and waste heat rejection at high temperature. An experimental set up has been built that allows the screening of thermionic coatings and new nano-materials from room temperature to 2000 K in high vacuum and at gap sizes as small as 1 mm. A new class of very high temperature compatible materials, carbon nanotubes, has been investigated for their performance as cathodes. Seven different types of carbon nanotubes have been screened as thermionic emitter cathodes and compared to tungsten and nitrogen doped diamond. It has been found that some carbon nanotubes combine excellent temperature stability with good thermal emission performance. Yet other carbon nanotubes exhibited exceptional combined thermal and field enhanced emission performance.