Novel cathode-on-film VME pressure sensor

In this paper, the authors present a new structured vacuum microelectronic (VME) sensor which dramatically reduces the alignment accuracy requirement and makes the assembly of the sensor much easier to control. In the conventional VME sensor, the emission cathode and the sensing film are fabricated respectively, and then bonded together. Our new idea is to make the emission cathode directly on the pressure sensing membrane, and the sensing film no longer need to be fabricated on the other wafer which acts as the anode. Thus the required align accuracy is reduced by 1-2 orders of magnitude when bond the anode with the cathode.