Experimental results on gridded arrays of field emission tips

The results of experiments on gridded arrays of both dry-etched niobium and wet-etched silicon field emission tips are reported. The niobium results are the first to be reported for field emission from emitters fabricated in sputtered metal layers by reactive ion etching. Both I-V measurements and electron emission spectra are presented. It is found that emission occurred from only a small fraction of the available surface area, which is consistent with previous results for emission from tips fabricated by evaporating metal through the grid aperture. Spectroscopic measurements on the silicon tips revealed that the emission originated from several electronvolts below the Fermi energy in the emitters and that the linewidth is narrow with Delta E=0.28 eV full width at half maximum.<>