Abstract
Summary form only given. Field emission cathodes are being developed for use in commercial and military applications such as microwave power tubes, sensors, high brightness electron beam sources for analytical instrumentation, and flat panel displays. For all of these applications, lower voltage operation is highly desirable. In flat panel displays, low voltage operation allows the use of inexpensive, off-the-shelf driver electronics and decreases the drive power requirements. The proposed approach is to decrease the operating voltage of field emission cathodes by using diamond films to lower the work function of the emitting surface as compared to conventional tip materials such as Si or Mo. Under certain conditions, diamond films have been shown to exhibit negative electron affinity, which is expected to result in greatly enhanced electron emission. The diamond films will also improve reliability of the cathodes through decreased probability of vacuum arcs due to the lower operating voltages, and increase stability of the emission current due to the high chemical and mechanical stability of the diamond firm surface.
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