The field enhancement is one of the important factors that indicate the performance of field emission cold cathode devices. It is intimately related to the field emission current density and the threshold voltage of the device. In our paper, the field enhancement factor of a normal-gated field emission nanowire cold cathode model was analytically deduced on the basis of classical electrostatic theory, and it is given by the equation. β=k1{N2·(L-d1)2+［1/k1+(L-d1)］2}1/2. The effect of geometrical parameters of the device on the field enhancement factor was explored. The theoretical analysis showed that the larger the length (L-d1) of nanowire above the gate and the gate hole radius, the larger the enhancement factor is; but the larger the nanowire radius, the smaller the enhancement factor is. When the L is much larger thand1, the enhancement factor satisfies the relation. β∝Ｌ／r0, for which N=N1(k1r0)/N0(k1r0), N0(k1r0) and N1(k1r0) are both Neumann functions and k1=0.8936/R. R, L, r0 and d1 are the gate hole radius, the nanowire length, the nanowire radius and the gate-cathode distance, respectively.

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