Improvement of emission efficiency of nanocrystalline silicon planar cathodes

In this paper, in order to improve the emission efficiency and understand the emission mechanism MOS cathodes are fabricated based on nanocrystalline Si (nc-Si) prepared by a pulsed laser ablation (PLA) technique and investigated their emission properties. The cathode is composed of nc-Si covered with a thin oxide film sandwiched between an n-type silicon substrate as an electron source and a thin top electrode. The emission area of the cathode was designed 500 mum in diameter. The emission characteristics of the nc-Si MOS cathode were measured in a vacuum of 10
^-5
pa.