A THEORETICAL-STUDY ON FIELD-EMISSION ARRAY FOR MICROSENSORS

Due to specific advantages of the vacuum as a device medium, there is a renewed interest in triode-like microelectronics utilizing available IC technology. However, some of the fundamental important questions regarding the geometric design parameters, which are essential to device design, remain unanswered. This paper presents some new results on the analysis of two generic cone-shape and wedge-shape emitter-array diodes. The effects of the variations in device geometrical structure on its potential distribution, electric field, and emission current are discussed. Pressure sensors based on these diode structures with one electrode fabricated on a pressure sensitive thin diaphragm are studied. Our analysis shows that cone-shape emitter array has larger emission current per emitter tip, but wedge-shape array has better pressure sensitivity. Field emission array can also be applied to other microsensors such as accelerometer, integrated microphone, tactile sensor and many others.