Low turn-on voltage Mo-polycide field emitter arrays applied to field emission flat panel display

Abstract

As an attempt to develop field emission flat panel displays, gated Mo-polycide field emitter arrays (FEAs) have been designed and successfully fabricated. The field emission display (FED) using these FEAs eliminates the difficulty of achieving well-to-well isolation that is considered as one of the most serious problems of silicon-based FED. The fabricated Mo-polycide FEAs were applied to a 0.7 in. diagonal monochrome FED composed of 25×25 pixels. Each pixel consists of 25×25 tips. At an anode voltage of 200 V dc and a gate voltage of 60 V with duty of 1/3, the anode current of several hundred nanoamperes per pixel was obtained from vacuum-sealed Mo-polycide FEAs. Emission tests in various vacuum environments revealed that the electron emission was reduced as the vacuum was degraded and estimated vacuum inside panel was 1.0×10−6, 1.2×10−5, and 2.9×10−6 Torr at pre-seal-off, post-seal-off, and after getter activation, respectively. Alphabetical characters can be displayed on the FED panel using driver circuits which are able to drive 640×480 pixels. The produced images have demonstrated a luminance of up to 70 cd/m2 at an anode voltage of 200 V and were degraded over time. The degradation of the luminescence seemed to be related with the Coulombic aging and burn-in of the phosphor, which could be indirectly confirmed from the microscopic picture of the FED phosphor screen showing burn-in of the phosphor which was observed on the spots with special brightness.