Amorphous-silicon-on-glass field emitter arrays

An amorphous-silicon (a-Si) field emitter array (FEA) has been fabricated on a glass substrate and characterized, At first, a 0.3-μm-thick Cr film was deposited on the glass by vacuum evaporation technique and subsequently a 1-μm-thick Si film was deposited on the Cr film by conventional RF sputtering technique with an undoped Si target at room temperature. The sputtered Si film was identified as amorphous from X-ray diffraction patterns and had a resistivity of 3-5 k/spl Omega/-cm. The FEA consists of 1-μm-high emitter tips and a gate electrode with 1.8-μm-diameter openings. This a-Si FEA with 5×5 (=25) tips exhibited a threshold voltage of 30 V and an emission current of 2 μA at a gate voltage of 100 V. Structure and emission characteristics are discussed.