Field Emission from Silicon Nanocones Cathodes

Abstract

High-current electron beams have a wide range of applications. Generating such beams in a compact and robust way is appealing for some of these applications. Among the various high-current emission processes, field emission appears to be promising. One of its appealing featuring being its simplicity. In this paper, we report on preliminary experimental results on field-emission cathode consisting of self-assembled silicon nanocones. We discuss the setup employed for the measurements and present the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic curves along with the inferred field-enhancement factors.