Gated field emitter using carbon nanotubes for vacuum microelectronic devices

We have fabricated a gated field emitter using directly grown carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as an electron emission source. Vertically aligned CNTs were grown at the center of the gate hole using thermal chemical vapor deposition. In order to reduce the leakage current due to flowing current along CNTs grown on the sidewalls of the gate hole, we adopted a new process scheme such as sidewall protector. The leakage current of gated CNT emitter with sidewall protector shows a decrease of 85.8 % compared to that of a conventional structure.