Study on Ballistic Transport Electronics—A Vacuum Field Emission Transistor with Carbon Nanotube Cold Cathode

Vacuum field emission transistors (VFETs) are emerging as promising alternatives to solid state electronic devices under high frequency environments. Here, we propose a VFET with back gate and carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays as cathode. The output characteristics, transfer characteristics and field emission properties of VFET are obtained by particle trajectory simulation method. The simulation results show that CNT arrays achieve high field enhanced factors, and the field emission current is increased by reducing the field shielding effect. The device has 33 nS transconductance at 8 V anode voltage, which shows fast signal response and low operating voltage. Moreover, VFET based on CNT arrays can change the numbers of CNT emitters to control the properties of the devices and even achieving high power gain. Ulteriorly, considering the ballistic transport in nanogap, these devices are expected to realize power amplify applications in high frequency regime.