Silicide application on gated single-crystal, polycrystalline and amorphous silicon FEAs. I. Mo silicide

In order to improve both the level and the stability of electron field emission, the tip surface of silicon field emitters have been coated with a molybdenum layer of thickness 25 nm through the gate opening and annealed rapidly at 1000°C in inert gas ambient. The gate voltages of single-crystal silicon (c-Si), polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) and amorphous silicon (a-Si) field emitter arrays (FEAs) required to obtain anode current of 10 nA per tip are 90 V, 69 V, and 84 V, respectively. In the case of the silicide emitters based on c-Si, poly-Si and a-Si, these gate voltages are 76 V, 63 V, and 69 V, respectively. Compared with c-Si, poly Si and a-Si field emitters, the application of Mo silicide on the same silicon field emitters exhibited 9.6 times, 2.1 times, and 4.2 times higher maximum emission current, and 6.1 times, 3.7 times, and 3.1 times lower current fluctuation, respectively. Moreover, the emission currents of the silicide FEAs depending on vacuum level are almost same in the range of 10^-9~10^-6 torr. This result shows that silicide is robust in terms of anode current degradation due to the absorption of air molecules