Silicon needle crystals fabricated by high-selective anisotropic dry etching and their characteristics of field emission current

Abstract

We study silicon needle crystals fabricated by high-selective anisotropic dry etching. The etch mask is not the fine patterned photoresist but the oxygen precipitation, which is induced by nitride ion implantation and the following oxidization. The silicon needle crystals have less than 10 nm tip radius and high aspect ratio 7. We demonstrate the field emission diode by these silicon needle crystals.