Prepare the way to manufacture a patternable metallized substrate for W-UFEA by use of a DIBD

Summary form only given. At the cutting edge of field emitter array (FEA) development in the world today, a new simple and low cost optoelectronic method of manufacturing FEAs has been developed. This technique is capable of producing easily a large area FEA and an ultra long emitter, obtaining a very uniform diameter of the emitter and potential possibility of gating the electron emission with a low capacitance through the use of a very thin gate electrode and controlling the emission area size and shape externally. By using this new method, some FEA matrix devices with different shapes and sizes, including circular, square and rectangular of 60/spl times/40 mm/sup 2/ area have been made up. The emitter material is W and the process goes by the name of W-UFEA (Ultra Long FEA). This article also introduces an improved dual ion beam deposition (DIBD) method in which, firstly, the matrix surface is cleaned thoroughly using a 3" low energy assisted ion beam bombardment source. Then metallic thin films are deposited sequentially through a 4" focused ion beam deposition source.