Stabilization of carbon-fiber cold field-emission cathodes with a dielectric coating

A comprehensive investigation has been carried out to determine the source of an inherent temporal instability in the spatial distribution and the electron emission current obtained from field-emitting carbon fiber tips. These instability effects were successfully overcome by coating the tip with a sub-micron layer of dielectric epoxy resin coating. The influence of the coating thickness was studied and an optimum thickness of 0.2-0.3 mum that produced high emission stability was found. A large reduction in the intensity fluctuations of the emission image, at this coating thickness is demonstrated by using chart recorder traces in addition to slow scans of an optically monitored screen signal. The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics were obtained at a threshold field that is a few times lower than that of the uncoated tip. At low emission current levels linear F-N plots were obtained with a slope value lower than that of the uncoated emitter. The spatial distribution consisted of a very bright spot without any internal structure. The total energy distribution of the emitted electrons demonstrated a non-metallic behavior. The spectra obtained consisted of a single peak for low currents and a double peak for higher currents. The electron energy was measured relative to the Fermi level of tungsten and a spectral shift was shown to be a function of the current. Experiments have shown that the coated tips are not affected by the variations of pressure conditions down to 10(-6) mbar. These results suggest that a resin coated fiber tip offers superior performance to tungsten as a cold field emission electron source. Numerous improvements in the performance are underway. This includes a variety of polymeric coatings and more emissive carbon fibers. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.