Temperature insensitive self-align gated diamond field emitter

Theoretically, the elimination of semiconductor junctions in vacuum microelectronics device makes them temperature insensitive and thus suitable for high temperature applications. However, conventional techniques using silicon tip has demonstrated temperature insensitive only up to 80/spl deg/C. Since diamond is a wide band gap material, electron emission from diamond emitter is expected to be temperature insensitive over a wider and higher temperature range than electron emission from small band gap semiconductors such as silicon. Emission characteristics of a self-align gated diamond emitter array have been investigated as a function of temperature up to 250/spl deg/C to examine its temperature insensitive behavior.