Deterministic cold cathode electron emission from carbon nanofibre arrays.
The ability to accurately design carbon nanofibre (CN) field emitters with predictable electron emission characteristics will enable their use as electron sources in various applications such as microwave amplifiers, electron microscopy, parallel beam electron lithography and advanced Xray sources. Here, highly uniform CN arrays of controlled diameter, pitch and length were fabricated using plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition and their individual emission characteristics and field enhancement factors were probed using scanning anode field emission mapping. For a pitch of 10 µm and a CN length of 5 µm, the directly measured enhancement factors of individual CNs was 242, which was in excellent agreement with conventional geometry estimates (240). We show here direct empirical evidence that in regular arrays of vertically aligned CNs the overall enhancement factor is reduced when the pitch between emitters is less than half the emitter height, in accordance to our electrostatic simulations. Individual emitters showed narrow Gaussian-like field enhancement distributions, in excellent agreement with electric field simulations.
1] Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, United Kingdom [2] Aixtron Ltd., Buckingham Business Park, Swavesey, CB24 4FQ, United Kingdom.
Matthew T
MT
Cole
Aixtron Ltd., Buckingham Business Park, Swavesey, CB24 4FQ, United Kingdom.
Kenneth B K
KB
Teo
Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science & Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
Oliver
O
Groening
Thales Research & Technology, Route Départementale 128, 91767 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
Laurent
L
Gangloff
Thales Research & Technology, Route Départementale 128, 91767 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
Pierre
P
Legagneux
1] Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, United Kingdom [2] Department of Information Display, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 130-701, Republic of Korea.
William I
WI
Milne