Abstract
The present work reports-on the fabrication of tungsten-coated silicon-based gated emitters. The main fabrication procedures include: forming silicon tips by way of reactive ion etching without thermal oxidation sharpening, tungsten coating and dielectric layer coating though plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, metal layer coating by evaporation, and gate aperture opening by wet chemical etching processes. Scanning electron microscopy in combination with energy dispersive x-ray analysis were employed to study the emitters during the fabrication. The radii of the tungsten-coated tips were about 30 nm. The gated emitters have a volcano shape with gate aperture diameter of less than 3 mu m and a silicon dioxide insulating layer 1 mu m thick. The gated field emitters exhibited a low turn-on voltage of about 60 V. Emission current above 15 mu A from a single emitter was observed. Fowler-Nordheim plots of the emitted current from these emitters confirmed the field emission-behavior. (C) 1999 American Vacuum Society. [S0734-211X(99)09702-4].
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 638-641 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Journal of vacuum science & technology b |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - 1999 |
Keywords
- FIELD EMITTER
- PERFORMANCE
- COLUMN
- TIPS