FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF LATERAL FIELD-EMITTER TRIODES

We have fabricated a field-emitter triode with tungsten electrodes arranged laterally on a quartz glass substrate by using the photolithography and dry etching techniques. The device consists of an array of 170 field-emitter tips with a 10-mu-m pitch, a columnar gate, and an anode. The emission characteristics followed the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling theory. The mutual conductance was about 0.02-mu-S at an anode voltage of 300 V. We have improved the fabrication process to obtain an emitter with an operating voltage of about 100 V.