User-friendly method for testing field electron emission data: Technical report

In field electron emission (FE) studies, the current/voltage or the macroscopic current-density/field characteristics of single tip or large area field emitters can be expressed in a nearly linear form using one of a small number of standard data-analysis plots. Usually, the chosen plot is a Fowler-Nordheim plot, a Murphy-Good plot or a Millikan-Lauritsen plot. The FE orthodoxy test can be applied to any of the three types of plots, to test the reasonability of the obtained experimental data. A difficulty of using the orthodoxy test is that there is no technical procedure or simple platform that can be used to apply the test to the experimental data. This report describes a simple web-tool that is designed to apply the FE orthodoxy test to any of these data-analysis plots, and then to use the test results to extract the emitter characterization parameters if the data passes the orthodoxy test. The web-tool is used by specifying the nature of the plot, the emitter's local work function, relevant system macroscopic parameters, and the coordinates of two "end-of-range" points on a line fitted to the data-analysis plot. The web-tool simplifies the data processing related to FE studies and experiments by: determining the value of the pre-exponential voltage/field exponent κ for Murphy-Good plots; evaluating the scaled-field parameters in FE theory that correspond to the ends of the working range; determining the status of the tested data before publishing it; determining the status of the emitter or experiments. Hopefully, the web-tool can help to develop basic understanding of the different behaviors of emitters.