Addressable carbon thin film cathode

We have recently reported that an emission site density of 2/spl times/10/sup 5//cm/sup 2/ and a current density of 100 mA/cm/sup 2/ can be achieved routinely over a relatively large area at an extraction field of about 10 V//spl mu/m for our field emission carbon thin films. Films with such emission properties are already good enough to be used for low to medium resolution displays. To make any usable device, however, the cathode has to be addressable. One of the problems that proved to be particularly challenging in pursuing an addressable carbon cathode is to overcome the edge emission from the cathode feed lines. In fact, this problem is universal for any thin film cathode regardless of the emitting material. In this paper, we will discuss in detail the difficulties that arise from this problem and the technique that we developed recently to overcome it.