Field emission of broadband semiconductors and dielectrics

Currently, there is considerable interest in field emission from thin carbon films and diamond-like structures as well as from systems containing fullerenes and nanotubes [ 1, 3-7, 15- 19]. Such systems are likely to find wide application in the low-voltage cold cathodes, used as sources of electrons in electro- vacuum devices, primarily in flat displays providing images of high brightness. Usually such systems are investigated in plane geometry (the cathode is taken to be a flat film positioned a distance d from the anode with a potential V
_a
). In all such systems the field emission is initiated by anomalously small fields.