Low turn-on voltage silicon field emitter arrays with atomically sharp tips

We report the demonstration of 1 /spl mu/m gate-aperture silicon field emission arrays with turn-on voltages as low as 14 V. The low turn-on voltage is attributed to the atomically sharp emitter tip whose radius of curvature could be less than 1 nm. The atomically sharp tips were obtained by isotropic etch of silicon and an optimized procedure for low temperature oxidation sharpening.