Aerospace environmental stability of nanostructured transfer mold amorphous carbon field emitter arrays

Abstract

Sharp, low operation voltage, and nanostructured amorphous carbon (a-C) field emitter arrays (FEAs) have been fabricated by Transfer Mold emitter fabrication method to realize the highly stable and reliable environment-hard vacuum nanoelectronic devices such as electric propulsion engines in aerospace, field emission displays (FEDs) and high-power conversion devices. The Transfer Mold a-C FEAs had the emitter base lengths of 41–1570 nm. The 41 nm FEAs is one of the smallest one, ever reported. Average tip radii were as sharp as 2.8–7.8 nm. The turn-on fields at the short distance of 10 μm between anode and emitter, are as low as 10.2–17.5 V/μm. The emission fluctuation rates, without radical treatment, of the 41 nm FEAs with no resistive layer, were as low as ±1.6%, which is one of the lowest value ever reported, compared with 5-several hundred % of the conventional FEAs. Moreover, Transfer Mold a-C FEAs exhibit the extremely stable fluctuations of less than ±4.5–4.8% in the oxygen radical atmospheres having highly reactive properties and fluxes (1015 atoms-cm−2s−1) with 107-108 orders of magnitude higher than typical fluxes (107-108 atoms-cm−2s−1) at aerospace environments. Thus, the nanostructured Transfer Mold a-C FEAs might be expected for the highly efficient and reliable vacuum electronic devices such as electric propulsion engines for aerospace applications to a great extent.