Field emission characteristics of iridium oxide tips

An important issue in field emission vacuum microelectronics is the stability of the field emitters with the residual ambient gas. Particularly important is that the field emitter tips made of refractory metals like molybdenum, niobium and tungsten are susceptible to oxidation. The corresponding metal oxides are insulating and adversely affect the emission current characteristic by increasing the width of the effective tunneling barrier. With this perspective, we studied iridium oxide field emitters to evaluate the characteristics of conductive oxide tips. We studied the field emission characteristics of iridium and thermally prepared iridium oxide field emitters using field emission microscopy and current–voltage measurements. We found that, upon oxidation, the voltage required to achieve the desired emission current desire dropped significantly. In addition, oxidation led to a decrease of emission current fluctuations. The development of stable conductive oxide field emitters should improve the performa...

[1]  B. Chalamala,et al.  Argon inclusion in sputtered films and the effect of the gas on molybdenum field emitter arrays , 2001 .

[2]  B. Chalamala,et al.  Fabrication of iridium field emitter arrays , 2000 .

[3]  J. Morse,et al.  Arrays of field emission cathode structures with sub-300 nm gates , 2000 .

[4]  F. Okuyama,et al.  Growth of a near-atomic protrusion on molybdenum field emitter tips under argon ion bombardment , 1999 .

[5]  B. Gnade,et al.  EFFECT OF GROWTH CONDITIONS ON SURFACE MORPHOLOGY AND PHOTOELECTRIC WORK FUNCTION CHARACTERISTICS OF IRIDIUM OXIDE THIN FILMS , 1999 .

[6]  Dorota Temple,et al.  Recent progress in field emitter array development for high performance applications , 1999 .

[7]  S. Kalbitzer,et al.  High-brightness source for ion and electron beams (invited) , 1998 .

[8]  R. Wallace,et al.  Effect of O2 on the electron emission characteristics of active molybdenum field emission cathode arrays , 1998 .

[9]  C. Klatt,et al.  Electron and ion emission properties of iridium supertip field emitters , 1998 .

[10]  S. Purcell,et al.  Nanoprotrusion model for field emission from integrated microtips , 1997 .

[11]  J. T. Ranney,et al.  The Surface Science of Metal Oxides , 1995 .

[12]  S. Itoh,et al.  Influences of gases on the field emission , 1993 .

[13]  T. Utsumi,et al.  Vacuum microelectronics: what's new and exciting , 1991 .

[14]  C. Spindt,et al.  Field-emitter arrays for vacuum microelectronics , 1991 .

[15]  Hideo Todokoro,et al.  Role of Ion Bombardment in Field Emission Current Instability , 1982 .

[16]  J. Cavaillé,et al.  Surface self-diffusion by ion impact , 1978 .

[17]  Ivor Brodie,et al.  Bombardment of field-emission cathodes by positive ions formed in the interelectrode region , 1975 .

[18]  E. Müller,et al.  Study of Molecular Patterns in the Field Emission Microscope , 1958 .

[19]  R. Behrisch,et al.  Sputtering by Particle Bombardment III , 1981 .

[20]  N. Winograd,et al.  ESCA studies of metal-oxygen surfaces using argon and oxygen ion-bombardment , 1974 .

[21]  O. Kubaschewski,et al.  Oxidation of metals and alloys , 1953 .