The fabrication and characterization of large scale integrated field emitter arrays for high current electron sources

Abstract

We report on the fabrication and the characteristics of large scale integrated field emitter arrays (FEAs) containing six million emitters. Our FEAs have a unique structure having a thermal-oxidized SiO/sub 2/ film as an insulator layer which separates the gate electrodes from the silicon cathode substrate. An anode current of 63.8 mA at 58.7 V has been obtained in the six million field emitters. This is one of the highest values reported in the world to date. From the FEA characteristics we have estimated a variation of the radius of curvature of the emitter tips. This variation has been found to be within 6.4 nm /spl plusmn/1.05 nm.