Field emission behavior of Au-tip-coated p-type Si pillar structures

Precisely aligned high-aspect-ratio (HAR) silicon tip arrays were fabricated using enhanced reactive ion etching with an inductively-coupled-plasma followed by a sharpening oxidation. A gold thin film was then sputtered only on the tips of the HAR structures. Field-emission (FE) properties from Au-coated HAR p-Si tip array cathodes have been systematically investigated by means of field emission scanning microscopy (FESM). A rather high efficiency of the HAR Si structures (71% at 550 V), but limited homogeneous FE with currents of 1–600 nA might be correlated with the varying geometry of the tips and the presence of oxides. I-V measurements of single Au-coated HAR emitters revealed activation effects and the saturation current region at 3 nA. An increase of the saturation current by 4 orders of magnitude was observed during 20 hours of conditioning at constant voltage, which finally resulted in nearly reproducible FN curves with a s-factor of 473. An excellent stability of the emission current of less than 1 % was obtained during the additional long-time conditioning at constant voltage. Optical switching under halogen lamp illumination resulted in at least 2 times higher saturation currents and showed a linear dependence of the FE current on the light color temperature.