COLLIMATED SPUTTER-DEPOSITION, A NOVEL METHOD FOR LARGE-AREA DEPOSITION OF SPINDT TYPE FIELD-EMISSION TIPS

A new technique has been developed to manufacture Spindt-type field emission (FE) cathodes. It is called collimated sputter deposition (CSD). A standard sputter deposition machine can be utilized to which a direction selecting filter is added. The particles passing the collimator are incident on the integrated field emission structure. As a result the holes in the gate are closed and tips are formed. A number of collimator configurations has been considered. The influence of the dominating process parameters is investigated. Several tip materials have been tested. FE results on tips manufactured by means of CSD are presented.