Field Emission Array Of Thin Film Technology

Vacuum micro-electronics device based on field emission cold cathode has become the focus of people around the world because it has lots of advantages such as high-speed electron transmission, low power consumption, high current density, operating without heating and so on. Field emission array (FEA) is the most important part of the vacuum micro- electronics device. The FEA devices are most widely used in the area of vacuum micro-electronics. In order to improve the performance of the FEA devices, many new structures have been designed and the preparation methods of FEA have been optimized constantly. Array-film is a novel approach that includes not only the advantages of the array but also the characters of the film materials. It is considered to be an effective method to improve the performance of the devices.Array-film is a method that films are coated after field emission array have been fabricated. If the film material chosen has low work function, high conductance and reliability, good emission can be gained.Array-film includes array fabrication and film coating. During the array fabricat- ion process, the practicability of the structure and the simplicity of the technique are mostly considered. It is because that silicon array has many advantages such as simply fabricating, high uniformity and is compatible with semiconductor technique. The silicon array can be chosen to form the array of the array-film. The choosing standard of the film materials includes work function, conductance, density and reliability. Being a good thermal emission material lanthanum hexaboride(LaB6) has excellent character and is perfect for the film.The key processes of fabricating silicon array coated with LaB6 film are silicon array fabrication and film deposition., They are mainly researched in this paper. The silicon array is fabricated with standard semiconductor techniques including oxidation, photolithogragh, dry etching, oxidation sharpening. The LaB6 film is deposited by electron beam evaporation. The XPS and XRD results indicate that the component of the film is closed to the bulk LaB6 material and the crystallinity is very good. The field emission characteristics of silicon array diode and silicon array coated with LaB6 are also researched and many testing datum including I-V characteristics and stability of field emission have been gained. The results show that silicon array coated with LaB6 film has perfect emission characteristics and very stable emission.