AlN nanorods-Intech Publisher-ISBN 978-953-51-0209-0.pdf

9 The Controlled Growth of Long AlN Nanorods and In Situ Investigation on Their Field Emission Properties Fei Liu*, Lifang Li, Zanjia Su, Shaozhi Deng, Jun Chen and Ningsheng Xu GuangDong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Physics and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China 1. Introduction Wide bandgap semiconductor nanostructures have been the research focus in recent years because of their unique physical and chemical properties and low electron affinity, which benefits for tunnel emission (Geis et al., 1991; Zhirnov et al., 1997; Kang et al., 2001; Liu et al., 2009). Among them, AlN nanostructures should deserve paid much attention due to their high melting-point ( 2300 oC), high thermal conductivity (K ~ 320 W/m·k), large exciton binding energy and strong endurance to harsh environment (Davis, 1991; Nicolaescu et al., 1994; Sheppard et al., 1990; Ponthieu et al., 1991). There have emerged many synthesis methods to fabricate different morphology of AlN nanostructures, such as nanocone, nanorod, and nanorods (Liu et al., 2009; Zhao et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2004; Tang et al., 2005; Shi et al., 2005, 2006; Wu et al., 2003; Paul et al., 2008). But for actual device applications of AlN nanostructures, there still exist many technique questions, which need to be solved as soon as possible. Firstly, the controlled growth of large area AlN nanostructures with uniform morphology is very difficult because of which cares about the uniformity of their physical properties in devices. Secondly, systemic investigation on the field emission (FE) properties of AlN nanostructures is not enough, which has fallen behind the development of the preparing method. Thirdly, it is unknown to us all that what factors take effect on their FE behaviors and how to find optimal growth conditions for their device applications. So developing a suitable way to controllably prepare AlN nanostructures