Direct synthesis of Cu2O-RGO nanocomposite on Cu foil by thermal evaporation method and its field emission study

In this work, a facile one step thermal evaporation method for deposition of Cu2O nanoparticles on RGO sheets to form Cu2O-RGO nanocomposite is discussed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on Cu2O-RGO nanocomposite, directly grown on Cu foil by a simple thermal evaporation route. The as –prepared nanocomposite exhibits well dispersed Cu2O nanoparticles distributed all over the graphene sheet. Field emission properties of the nanocomposite were investigated at a base pressure of 1*10−8 torr. The turn on field, required to draw emission current density of 0.1µA/cm2, was found to be 3.8V/µm with a maximum emission current density of 80 µA/cm2 at an applied field of 6.8 V/µm. Moreover, the nanocomposite shows fairly good emission stability without significant degradation of emission current. The FE results seem to be encouraging, indicative of potential candidature of the Cu2O-RGO nanocomposite emitter as an electron source for practical applications in vacuum nanoelectronic devices