A general computational method for electron emission and thermal effects in field emitting nanotips

The most commonly used theoretical tools for the calculation of electron emission are still nowadays the Fowler-Nordheim and the Richardson-Laue-Dushman equations, although it has been shown since the 1990's that they are inadequate for nanometrically sharp emitters or in the intermediate thermal-field regime. Here we present a recently developed computational method for the calculation of emission currents and Nottingham heat, which automatically distinguishes among different emission regimes, and implements the appropriate calculation method for each, aiming to maximize the calculation accuracy while minimizing the computational time. The implementation of our method shows that the emitted current is significantly different from the one predicted by the standard simple equations. Finally, we show that our tool can be also successfully applied in the analysis of experimental I-V data and especially the extraction of the emitter's radius of curvature.