The technology for producing metal ceramic (MC) plates is described. It was shown that application of the MC cathode allows one to increase the beam power by a factor ∼1.5 and the current by a factor of 2, compared to metal–dielectric cathodes. It has been found that the emission properties of the MC cathode can be controlled by changing the composition of the MC plate as well as by changing the geometric form of the MC plate.Namely, the rectangular MC plate produces a uniform potential distribution on its surface and it results in faster ignition of the surface flash-over which uniformly covers the cathode surface. This leads to a more uniform electron emission distribution. The latter results in significantly higher (>2 times, up to 20 A/ns) rate of the current increase. In addition, no visible damage of the MC surface was found after 106 shots indicating a potentially long lifetime of such type of cathodes.