Aerospace environmental stability of nanostructured transfer mold amorphous carbon field emitter arrays

Sharp, low operation voltage, and nanostructured amorphous carbon (a-C) field emitter arrays (FEAs) have been fabricated by Transfer Mold emitter fabrication method to realize the highly stable and reliable environment-hard vacuum nanoelectronic devices such as electric propulsion engines in aerospace, field emission displays (FEDs) and high-power conversion devices. The Transfer Mold a-C FEAs had the emitter base lengths of 41-1570 nm. The 41 nm FEAs is one of the smallest one, ever reported. Average tip radii were as sharp as 2.8-7.8 nm. The turn-on fields at the short distance of 10 μm between anode and emitter, are as low as 10.2-17.5 V/μm. The emission fluctuation rates, without radical treatment, of the 41 nm FEAs with no resistive layer, were as low as ±1.6%, which is one of the lowest value ever reported, compared with 5-several hundred % of the conventional FEAs. Moreover, Transfer Mold a-C FEAs exhibit the extremely stable fluctuations of less than ±4.5-4.8% in the oxygen radical atmospheres having highly reactive properties and fluxes (10
¹⁵
atoms-cm
^-2
s
^-1
) with 10
⁷
-10
⁸
orders of magnitude higher than typical fluxes (10
⁷
-10
⁸
atoms-cm
^-2
s
^-1
) at aerospace environments. Thus, the nanostructured Transfer Mold a-C FEAs might be expected for the highly efficient and reliable vacuum electronic devices such as electric propulsion engines for aerospace applications to a great extent.