Improving the Response Speed of an Active-Current Controlled Field Emitter Arrays by Modifying the Controlled Current

Abstract

Using an active-current control (ACC) component such as MOSFET in field emitter arrays (FEAs) is an important way to achieve stable emission current. However, the controlled current of ACC may reduce the response speed of FEAs due to the longer charging process, which limits its application. In this work, a general model for the field emission of MOSFET-controlled FEAs has been established to study the influence of controlled saturation current on its response speed. It is found that the response speed which decreases nearly linearly as the saturation current decreases can be reduced down by above 1 order of magnitude comparing to the intrinsic value. The field emission characteristics of a MOSFET-controlled ZnO nanowire FEAs under different saturation current and duty ratio have been investigated, in which the result is in consistency with the model. A solution using a controlled current which is larger than the induced current during the charging process and can rapidly reduce down to the field emission current has been proposed for balancing the stability and response speed in MOSFET-controlled FEAs. All the results provide a method for obtaining fast response ACC-FEAs, which should be useful in the application that requires pulsed driving FEAs.