Knife-edge Thin Film Field Emission Cathodes On [110] Silicon Wafers

In the effort to develop a high performance field emission cathode for application in microwave amplifiers, it is clear that the emitter structure should have a sharp emitter surface, a large emitter height, a small gate opening size, and a small emitter angle. We have developed a technique that fabricates knife‐edge field emission arrays (KEFEA) on (110) silicon wafers. KEFEA has an optimized structure meeting the requirements mentioned above. The emitter edge radius is about 250 A or less, the emitter height is 8 μm, and the gate gap is ∼0.2 μm. Experiments have exhibited Fowler–Nordheim type field emission with gate‐to‐substrate bias voltage less than 50 V.