High performance and reliable silicon field emission arrays enabled by silicon nanowire current limiters

We report a high current density (J > 100 A/cm²) cold cathode based on silicon field emitter arrays (FEAs) that operates at low voltage (V_GE <; 60 V), and has long lifetime (T > 100 hours @ 100 A/cm², > 300 hours @ 100 mA/cm²). The demonstrated current density is an increase of > 10x over state-of-the art (~10 A/cm²) for field emission cathodes operated in continuous wave (CW) mode. To achieve the record performance, we developed a unique device architecture that uses a high-aspect-ratio (~50:1) silicon nanowire current limiter to regulate electron flow to each field emitter tip in the array. High current, high current density, long lifetime cold cathodes that can be integrated with silicon ICs will enable new systems architectures for RF amplifiers, terahertz, IR, and x-ray sources.