Abstract
Nanocrystalline fluorine-doped tin oxide thin film is synthesized by sol–gel-dip-coating technique. Hydrofluoric acid is used as the F-source, which has performed a simultaneous dual activity: (1) it has improved the conductivity by F-doping and (2) has increased the surface roughness via mild etching, both of which have improved the field-emission performance of the doped film over the undoped film. Electron microscopic image of $$\hbox {SnO}_{2}$$ :F film has revealed highly sharp emitter tips at the film surface, which has provided a very high geometrical field enhancement factor ( $$\beta \sim 760$$ ) and a very low turn-on field ( $$\sim $$ 4.8 V $$\upmu \hbox {m}^{-1})$$ . The field-emission process follows the Fowler–Nordheim tunnelling of cold-electron emission. This simple and cost-effective approach can be very useful for surface nanostructuring of thin film-based field emitters with improved field-emission characteristics for vacuum microelectronics applications.
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