63.1: Invited Paper: Sharp, Uniform, Stable, and Environment‐hard Transfer‐Mold Field‐Emitter Arrays

Abstract

AbstractSharp, uniform, stable, and environment‐hard field‐emitter arrays (FEAs) have been fabricated by Transfer‐Mold fabrication method. These FEAs have potential for realizing stable and low operation voltage field‐emission displays and field‐emission lamps that are resistant to highly oxidizing atmospheres during the fabrication process.The extremely sharp and uniform Transfer‐Mold FEAs, which have the average tip radius of 2.6‐3.5 nm, have been developed by using the Transfer‐Mold fabrication method. These tip shapes including height are extremely uniform being different from CNTs' nonuniform tip radii, height and pitch. Also, these tip radii are similar to the diameter of the singlewalled CNTs, 0.4–6 nm, or less than the diameter of the multiwalled CNTs, 5–10 nm. The low operation voltage Transfer‐Mold FEAs has turn‐on fields of 17.5–21.8 V/μm at the short distance between anode and emitter, less than 30 μm. However, other conventional FEAs such as Spindt‐type FEAs, Gray‐type FEAs and CNTs FEAs have the approximated turn‐on fields of 50–600 V/μm. Therefore, those values of the turn‐on voltages are lower than those of other conventional FEAs and can be applicable for vacuum nanoelectronic devices such as FEDs and FELs. The current fluctuations of FEAs without resistive layer are the lowest value ever reported, ±1.6%, compared with 5‐several hundred % of the conventional FEAs. Also, the Transfer‐Mold Mo FEAs having the base lengths of 36–1570 nm without resistive layer, exhibited extremely stable current fluctuations of as low as ±1.6‐3.3% due to the extremely uniform geometric factors. Moreover, those of the environment‐hard Transfer‐Mold FEAs even under the oxygen radical or plasma treatments are as low as ±5.0–7.5%. However, for conventional FEAs with and without resistive layers, those are usually 5–100% and more than 100%, respectively. Therefore, the extremely sharp, uniform, stable, and environment‐hard Transfer‐Mold FEAs are useful for the stable and reliable vacuum nanodevices such as FEDs and FELs to a great extent.