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Feas Essay

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For the last two decades, the research and development of field emitter arrays (FEAs) and their applications have been pursued,1–3 for application to high speed electron devices,4–7 flat panel displays,8–10 light-emitting device,11–13 image sensors,14,15 miniaturized electron microscope,16,17 X-ray sources,18,19 electron sources for accelerators,20 and charge compensation device for ion implantation systems.21–25 Recent progresses in the development of FEAs have made it possible to provide active electron devices similar to semiconductor transistors or vacuum tubes,26–28 and the performance of these devices has come very close to those of discrete semiconductor devices or conventional vacuum pentodes.29 Moreover, multifunctional devices …show more content…

The improvement is due to the reduction of the work function owing to the desorption of adsorbates by temperature increase or by ion-bombardment of the emitter surface. We have demonstrated the reduction of the work function of HfN thin films by two methods: heat treatment and ion bombardment.49 The initial work function of 4.73 eV was reduced to 4.0 eV by heat treatment at 300 °C. If this is also the case with FEAs, we can obtain substantially improved emission properties. One purpose of the study is to confirm improvement of the electron emission properties due to reduction in the work function at elevated temperatures.
It is also of great importance to investigate the performance of the FEAs at elevated temperatures from the viewpoint of the development of electron devices for operation in harsh environments. The realization of electron devices that can be operated at high temperatures is strongly desired in various fields.50 Although the feasibility of FEAs at high temperatures has been suggested as one of the advantages of this kind of devices,1,29 only a few studies have observed the electron emission properties at elevated temperatures.40,41 Our recent achievements on high temperature devices such as lifetime extension at high temperatures are described elsewhere.51
In order to analyze the surface state of the emitter, an exact evaluation of the work function from the current-voltage

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