Synthesis and field emission of β-SiC nanowires on silicon nanoporous pillar array

Nonaligned β-SiC nanowires (nw-SiC) were grown on silicon nanoporous pillar array (Si-NPA) by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method with nickel as the catalyst. The curly hair like SiC nanowires and the silicon pillar array formed a nanometer-micron hierarchy structure. The field-emission measurements to nw-SiC/Si-NPA showed that a lower turn-on field of 2.9 V μm−1 was obtained, and the enhancement factor of nw-SiC/Si-NPA according to the Fowler–Nordheim (F–N) theory reached 5200. The excellent field-emission performance was attributed to the nanometer-micron hierarchy structure of nw-SiC/Si-NPA, including the high aspect ratio of the SiC nanowires and the regular surface undulation of Si-NPA which increased the emission sites density and might have reduced the electrostatic shielding among the emitters.