Surface application of metal silicides for improved electrical properties of field-emitter arrays

Abstract

This paper concerns the positive effects of chromium or titanium silicide coating on the electrical characteristics of micro-tips. The metal-coated silicon micro-tips were prepared by the silicidation process. The surface morphologies and electrical properties of the samples were measured and analyzed. It was found that the application of chromium silicide to silicon field emitters decreases the current fluctuation range to about 50% that of a pure silicon emitter. Both metal-silicide-coated samples exhibited high discharge resistances. In particular, the titanium-silicide-coated sample exhibited a discharge resistance up to an emission current of 30 µA, which is higher than that of the chromium-silicide-coated sample. A silicon-metal-silicide vacuum-band model is proposed to explain the electrical characteristics. The effect of stabilization can be explained in terms of reduced number of chemically active sites resulting in a silicide-protected and chemically stable layer, hence the higher electrical conductivity of the material.

Morphology-controlled growth of chromium silicide nanostructures and their field emission properties

“…These values were lower than those for the comb-like CrSi 2 nanostructures (5.3-6.5 V mm À1 ), 17 and comparable to the turn-on fields (3-6 V mm À1 ) for the nanostructured field emitters of other metal silicides such as nickel silicide, titanium silicide, cobalt silicide and tantalum silicide. 8,19,[27][28][29][30][31] Fig. 4b showed the corresponding Fowler-Nowdhein (FN) plots, i.e.…”

“…Due to their low resistivity, 9,15 low work function ($3.9 eV), 19 and large aspect ratio, CrSi 2 nanostructures should exhibit promising field emission properties. However, rare work has been done on the field emission properties of CrSi 2 nanostructures 17 due to the difficulty in their controllable synthesis.…”

Single-crystalline chromium silicide nanowires and their physical properties

“…Additionally, it is a thermoelectric conversion component that could be applied to generate electric power at high temperatures [20]; the figure of merit (ZT) of CrSi 2 has been measured to be 0.25 at 900 K [21]. CrSi 2 also has good field emission with relatively low work function (3.9 eV) [22] as compared with generally studied field emission materials such as CNTs (5 eV) [23] and ZnO (5.3 eV) [24]. With excellent intrinsic properties of CrSi 2 , onedimensional CrSi 2 nanowires are expected to improve field emission performances by bulk and thin film CrSi 2 .…”

Single-crystalline chromium silicide nanowires and their physical properties

“…Additionally, it is a thermoelectric conversion component that could be applied to generate electric power at high temperatures [ 20 ]; the figure of merit (ZT) of CrSi 2 has been measured to be 0.25 at 900 K [ 21 ]. CrSi 2 also has good field emission with relatively low work function (3.9 eV) [ 22 ] as compared with generally studied field emission materials such as CNTs (5 eV) [ 23 ] and ZnO (5.3 eV) [ 24 ]. With excellent intrinsic properties of CrSi 2 , one-dimensional CrSi 2 nanowires are expected to improve field emission performances by bulk and thin film CrSi 2 .…”