Emission characteristics of gated silicon wedges

Gated field emission wedges of varying lengths have been fabricated and tested. These wedges emit at 180-200 V from multiple emission sites that are approximately evenly distributed along the wedge. This results in emission currents that scale with the length of the wedge. The maximum emission current observed is about 0.1 mu A/ mu m of wedge length, beyond which localized failure events occur. These localized failure events sometimes cause the wedge emitter to short to the gate, but frequently the emission characteristic of the wedge is not seriously affected as long as most of the wedge remains intact. A single wedge may undergo up to hundreds of individual failures and still emit.<>