In situ oxidizing environment field emission study of Mo nanowall cold cathode

Mo nanowalls with high and stable field emission properties have been synthesized by a thermal vapor deposition method, and it shows strong immunity to the in situ oxidizing environment. After pure O₂ exposure, the degradation of emission current was only 42.31% when the vacuum pressure increased from 2×10^-6 Pa to 5×10^-4 Pa. For those exposures over 1×10^-3 Pa, the cathode´s total recover was still possible. Moreover, only the extremely serious exposures could make the surface chemistry and geometrical structure be irreversibly destroyed. The wall-like structure and its excellent heat dissipation potential may be quite a big advantage, and hence such cold cathode could be beneficial to the device packaging in rough vacuum environment.