Aspects of field emission from silicon diode arrays

The authors studied the field emission of arrays of lithographically fabricated silicon tips both by electrical characterization and by direct imaging of the spatial emission pattern. The authors describe experiments and analyses which support the supposition that the emitting tips are simply those which have the smallest values out of a Poisson distribution of tip radii created by the etching process. Many samples give rise to Fowler-Nordheim plots which consist of two distinct regions with different slopes. A model of this behavior is proposed in terms of a random distribution of tip radii, truncated on the low side by melting or surface reconstruction. The model also explains why so few tips in an array actually contribute