Abstract Submitted to the    NANOTUBE'04 Conference:

Since demonstrating the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as excellent field emitters, much effort has been made to control their growth for optimal field emission characteristics. We have controlled the growth of multiwalled CNTs in terms of the populations and diameters by thermal chemical vapor deposition. The intermediate density of CNTs synthesized on Si substrates showed better field emission characteristics than high or low density. The diameters of CNTs were controlled as small as 10-30 nm by introducing a buffer layer underneath the metal catalyst, being also related to the field emission properties. Repeated electrical conditioning of CNTs demonstrated an improvement of the field emission uniformity as well as the long-term stability, but decreased their field enhancement factors with some physical damages to CNTs observed. This study will also discuss our recent results on the field emission of CNTs.