Novel emitter structures for field emission displays

Flat panel display devices today are manufactured almost exclusively using liquid crystal and active matrix liquid crystal technologies. Although these processes have been developed and continually refined for a number of years the manufactured panels still suffer problems with viewing angle, display brightness, and robustness. For these reasons and because of the overwhelming market demand, a number of alternative technological approaches are presently being developed. Amongst these new approaches, FEDT (Field Emission Display Technology) is one that could provide many improvements. In this paper we report on progress on individual steps towards development of a novel approach for the fabrication of nanometer size emitter array structures for field emission displays. These processes compatible with standard semiconductor processing techniques, provide the means to fabricate arrays with an aspect ratio of 100:1 without the use of sub-micron lithography. Test results to date have determined the field emission current density is approximately 30 mA/cm(2) for applied fields of 4.5V/um and the emission site density is estimated at 10(8)/cm(2).