Resonant Fowler-Nordheim tunneling emission from metal-oxide-semiconductor cathodes

A metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) tunneling cathode was fabricated with an ultra thin oxide layer and a abrupt inte$ace between the oxide layer and the polycrystalline Si gate electrode. The emission current shows periodic deviations on the Fowler-Nordheim (F-N) plot estimated by the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation. The peaks in the oscillations are confirmed to arise from the resonant effect of electron tunneling by comparing the experimental results with the theoretical calculations. This is the first experimental evidence of resonant tunneling emission.