Resonant Fowler-Nordheim tunneling emission from metal-oxide-semiconductor cathodes

A metal-oxide-semiconductor tunneling cathode was fabricated with an ultrathin oxide layer and an abrupt interface between the oxide layer and the polycrystalline Si gate electrode. The emission current shows periodic deviations on the Fowler-Nordheim plot estimated by the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation. The peaks in the oscillations are confirmed to arise from the resonant effect of electron tunneling by comparing the experimental results with the theoretical calculations. This article describes the first experiment of resonant tunneling emission. (C) 1998 American Vacuum Society. [S0734-211X(98)02502-5].