On the mechanism of field emission from mechanical pencil lead

Author

Sasaki, Masahiro ; Endo, Toshihiro ; Higuchi, Toshiharu ; Yamada, Yoichi

Author_Institution

Inst. of Appl. Phys., Univ. of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

fYear

2012

fDate

9-13 July 2012

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

The perpendicularly cut end of the carbonized mechanical pencil lead shows superior field emission (FE) features, that is, the lower threshold electric field, the extremely lower effective work function, and the quite higher maximum current density, even though the corner edge is rounded. In this paper, we have discussed the mechanism of the superior FE features on the basis of the comparison with FE current and FIM/FEM images of the HOPG edges. The graphene edge existing on the pencil lead end is a dominant candidate of the emission site, giving the superior FE features.

Keywords

current density; electric fields; electron field emission; graphene; FE features; FIM-FEM images; HOPG edges; carbonized mechanical pencil lead; corner edge; current density; field emission mechanism; highly oriented pyrolytic graphite edge; lower threshold electric field; work function; Current measurement; Electric fields; Finite element methods; Image edge detection; Iron; FEM; FIM; HOPG; graphene edge; mechanical pencil lead;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Vacuum Nanoelectronics Conference (IVNC), 2012 25th International

Conference_Location

Jeju

ISSN

pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1983-6

Electronic_ISBN

pending

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IVNC.2012.6316887

Filename

6316887