Locally grown ZnO nanowires on MOSFET drain electrode and the effect of active control on field electron emission

Active control on field emission current has been an important issue for application of field emitter arrays in modern vacuum micro/nano devices. Earlier, MOSFET (/TFT)-structured Si and Mo tip devices have been demonstrated. It was found that the emission current can be active controlled by the built-in MOSFET (/TFT) [1, 2]. Meanwhile, the stability of the emission current was dramatically improved. However, the high-cost micro-fabrication process and the difficulty in large area device fabrication limit its further application. Although there are a large number of reports on field emission properties of one dimensional nanomaterials, few reports are concerned with the active control on their field emission current. One possible reason is that normally high temperature is needed for preparation of nano-materials, which is far beyond the endurance of the active device. In the present work, experiments have been carried out to study locally-grown ZnO nanowires on the drain-electrode of MOSFET by low-temperature solution-phase method and the effect of active control on field electron emission.