Effect of temperature on field emission properties from nanoclusters of tungsten oxide on silicon carbide

Tungsten nanoclusters films were grown on silicon carbide substrate in a thermal evaporation process without using catalyst. The temperature dependence of the field emission properties from the tungsten nanoclusters films has been studied in a range from 323 K to 543 K by using the transparent anode technique. The results show that the field emission current increases significantly with increasing temperature. As a consequence, the turn-on voltage for obtaining emission current density of 10 /spl mu/A/cm/sup 2/ decreases from 11.5 MV/m at 323 K to 2.375 MV/m at 543 K.