Electron field emission properties of a gated conductive nanowire

A gated nanowire model was proposed to estimate the field-emission performance of a conductive nanowire in gated structure. The actual electric fields around the nanowire top and the field-enhancement factor were calculated analytically based on an electrostatic theory. The influence of the device parameters such as the gate and anode voltages, the gate-hole radius, and the radius and length of the nanowire on the field-enhancement factor, the current and apex current density were discussed in detail. The results show that the field enhancement increases rapidly with the decrease of the gate-hole and nanowire radius, but the former almost increases linearly with the nanowire length. In addition, it was found that the current and current density at the edge of the nanowire increases exponentially with the gate and anode voltages.