Hot electron cold cathode for CRTs, etc

It is pointed out that the extremely hot electrons produced by loss-free acceleration known to exist in several wide-gap semiconductors used usually for thin-film electroluminescence can easily be made to exit into vacuum. The pulsed, matrix-addressable, large-area cold cathode has properties attractive for various applications. The working principle of this hot electron cold cathode (HECC) is described, and experimental results are presented. It is pointed out that one of the most interesting applications of the HECC is the flat cathode ray tube, which could consist of a usual video screen and an HECC, situated in a vacuum vessel, facing each other and realizing a 1:1 correspondence of HECC structure to screen structure.<>