Lateral Silicon Field-Emission Devices using Electron Beam Lithography

Abstract

We fabricated field-emission vacuum microelectronic devices such as diode and triode devices, using high-resolution electron-beam lithography in combination with the reactive ion etching (RIE) technique. The turn-on voltage of the diode is 13 V, which is the lowest value reported for single-crystalline lateral silicon field-emission devices. An emission current of 1.4 µA was obtained at an anode bias of 40 V. Field emission was confirmed by the linearity of the Fowler-Nordheim plots. The anode current of the triode was effectively modulated as a function of gate voltage. The device stability results show that the proposed devices are stable and reproducible.

Large Scale Engineered Nanostructured Surfaces by Reactive Ion Etching with Kinetically Self-Assembled Non-continuous Metal Film as Etching Mask

“…Nanostructured surfaces with certain degree of roughness were found to be surprisingly effective in reducing the surface friction and leading to a "water repellent" surface [1,2]. Different techniques have been developed to obtain nanostructured surfaces in the last few years [9][10][11][12][13], such as swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiation [9] and spray deposition of nanoscale metal particles [10], anodization of aluminum thin film [11], polystyrene as metal deposition mask [7] and low power plasma with the presence of aluminum leads to the formation of AlF 3 as natural mask [5]. Another area that nanopatterned structures are finding increasingly important applications is the semiconductor quantum devices fabrication.…”

“…Nanopatterned surfaces also found innovative applications in recording cellular activities [3], protein recognition [4], which are the fundamental aspects for the future disease diagnosing and biological sensing. Nano-structured surfaces from size-selected clusters [12,1], and e-beam lithography [13]. Ordered arrays of silicon nanopillars and nanopoles [5][6][7] structures as field emission centers are explored since the discovery of strong visible photoluminescence from porous silicon by Canham [8].…”