title: Comparison between experimental and computer simulations of current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of dielectric-coated photon-stimulated field emitters.
abstract: For the purpose of simulating photon-stimulated field emission by taking account of three-dimensional aspects, a transfer-matrix formulation of electronic scattering was combined with a Floquet expansion of the wave function for taking account of quanta exchanges between the electrons and the external radiation. With specific techniques to preserve numerical stability, this transfer-matrix formalism is well suited to compute the transmission of the field-emitted/photon-stimulated electrons between two electrodes. This theory is applied to the computation of Fowler-Nordheim curves describing the photon-stimulated field emission of a tungsten plane emitter (described by z< or =0), which supports a nanometric protrusion and a dielectric coating. The extraction bias ranges from 12 to 24V, for an inter-electrode distance of 4nm. The electromagnetic radiation has a wavelength of 0.67 microm and a power flux density ranging from 5.96 x 10(10) to 5.96 x 10(12) W/m2. The effects due to the protrusion and the dielectric coating are studied. These theoretical results are compared with the experimental data.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique du Solide, Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium. alexandre.mayer@fundp.ac.be
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mayer
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Mousa
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Vigneron