Low temperature fabrication of sharp vertical field emitters

Abstract

Summary form only given. Sealed, field emission diodes based on sharp vertical edge structures have been fabricated using low temperature processing techniques. The low temperature processing allows these sealed, field emitters to be fabricated on the same silicon wafer with standard CMOS field effect transistors. This makes it is possible to fabricate a complete field emission flat panel display along with the control electronics on a single silicon wafer. The sharp vertical field emitters were formed using self-aligned conformal thin film deposition techniques, while the recessed sealed vacuum cavities were formed using standard semiconductor fabrication techniques. These processing methods eliminate many of the fabrication difficulties and performance variations associated with other previously employed fabrication techniques used for producing field emission devices. The I-V characteristics of the devices were measured for various temperatures between 25/spl deg/C and 200/spl deg/C. It was found that the experimental data could be fitted to the Fowler-Nordheim equation, indicating that they are field emission devices. A typical device, which is 10 /spl mu/m by 10 /spl mu/m, produced 1 /spl mu/Amp of current at an applied voltage of 30 volts. These devices have possible future applications for flat panel displays and high frequency triodes/diodes.