Porous silicon field emission cathode development

This article will address the development of a porous silicon cathode technology which shows promise in solving the existing problems, specifically unstable, low current density, nonreproducible and high voltage emission, encountered by other cathode technologies. Monolithic two‐ and three‐terminal devices have been designed, manufactured, and characterized. All of these devices have resulted in stable, reproducible operating characteristics that follow the Fowler–Nordheim model. Vacuum transport of the electrons and temperature independence (to 250 °C) of the current–voltage characteristics have been confirmed. Appreciable emission current has been observed with macroscopic fields on the order of 10⁴ V/cm, thus indicating a large submicroscopic field enhancement due to the geometrical nature of the porous silicon.