Noise-enhanced field emission current from a carbon nanotube cantilever

Field emission current is widely used to measure various characteristics of nanoscale. In this Letter, a cantilever of a carbon nanotube is focused and the amplification of the current is discussed. Increasing the voltage which induces the current gives the amplification; however, this method results in the large power consumption. This Letter provides the alternative solution with the use of the surrounding noise. Exploiting the non-linear behaviour of the current and introducing a signal processing of time-averaging, the amplification is observed. The theoretical discussion provides the concrete theory of the amplification: essentially such an effect is obtained by the modulation of the probability density of the noisy voltage. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.