ESTIMATION OF METAL-DEPOSITED FIELD EMITTERS FOR THE MICRO-VACUUM TUBE

The material dependence on the emission characterisitics of metal-deposited field emitters has been investigated in order to determine the cathode material suitable for vacuum microelectronics devices. It is shown that the relationships between the intercepts and the slopes of the experimental F-N plots give the apparent differences of the, materials even though the radii of the apices are not equal among the emitters. We derive the modified F-N equation from the experimental values and the semi-empirical assumption as a linear variation of the work function with electrical field due to an adsorption effect. From this equation we calculate the emitting area, the radius of the emitter apex and the work function.