This paper describes the fabrication of large arrays(106 unitsin 1 cm2)of 100 µm tall, single-crystal silicon columns with submicron tip cross-sections. The columns areformed using thin film deposition and growth, reactive ion etching, and deep reactive ionetching. The columns can be either slightly tapered or have pencil-like morphology withnanoscaled tip diameter (41 nm). Conformal thin film coating was used to substantially anduniformly modify the porous structure and, thus, vary by orders of magnitude the fluidpermeability of the structure. Gaps between the vertical pillars were varied between9 µm and 50 nm. Isolated45 nm diameter, 5 µm tall plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposited multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs)were grown on the top surface of the columns using a 7 nm thick evaporated Nifilm as catalyst. Field emission characterization of the resulting structure wasconducted and it is in agreement with scanning electron micrographs of the MWNTs.