Abstract
Large area displays such as laptop computers and flat screen televisions have enormous market potential. There are numerous technologies in existence today, including LCD (liquid crystal displays) and plasma, however they each suffer from unique limitations, mainly the size of the display and operating conditions. There is still a need for a method of depositing electronic materials over large areas at suitable temperatures. This is important since the construction of panels using sub-modules such as crystalline silicon wafers is very difficult and expensive. The displays based on liquid crystals that use thin film transistor (TFT) driven active matrix addressing is the most common flat screen technology at present. However, there are great problems associated with yield in fabrication, especially for screen dimensions over 14 inches. Hence the screens are very expensive. Field emission displays utilising the phenomenon of field emission in which electrons escape their work function and "jump" from the surface of the semiconductor into a vacuum has been proposed as a competing technology. Each pixel is controlled by many tip based emitters, therefore improving the yield. This thesis explores the field emission properties and mechanisms of tip based emitters, and also explore the possibility of utilising carbon nanotubes as electron sources for field emission displays.