Carbon-rich nanostructured a-SiC for cold emitters

This work describes emission properties of a new nanostructured material which is carbon-rich amorphous (a) SiC deposited on silicon wafer. Even non-optimized technology demonstrates that the field enhanced factor of the electron emission can reach of 1000 with current density near 1×10
^-3
A/cm
²
and efficiency of electron emission near 10%. A good correlation between charge transfer through the a-SiC layer and electron emission from the material in high vacuum is observed.