Field emission behaviour of nickel nanowires grown by electrochemical deposition

In this work, aligned nickel nanowires have been fabricated by electrodeposition using anodic alumina oxide templates with 200 nm pore dimension. With this low cost deposition technique, a uniform filling of the membrane has been obtained with an height of the nanowires of 2 mu m. The field emission characteristics of the prepared NiNWs have been measured demonstrating, after a conditioning step, a stable behaviour that follows the Fowler-Nordheim law. A current density of 17,8 mu A/cm(2) is obtained for an applied voltage of 570 V. A non-linear Fowler-Nordheim plot has been observed at high electric field that can be attributed to the non uniform field enhancement factor of the different nanowires.