Low-voltage vertical multilayer thin-film-edge FEA for field emitter displays

A new field emitter array (FEA) electron source has been developed which includes a hollow cylindrical multi-layer thin-film-edge low work function emitter and a low capacitance horizontal extraction gate. The field emitter is made by sandwiching a low work function lithium thin film between two high work function noble metal thin films to create a lithium dispenser field emitter in each FEA cell. Our fabrication method based on conformal chemical beam deposition, is self-aligned and consists of very few processing steps compared to conical or pyramidal FEAs. The structure is fundamentally tolerant to back ion-bombardment and insensitive to poisoning as determined by cycling the operating emitter from 10(-8) to 10(-6) Ton of room air for several hours with no significant change in emission current. Using an extraction voltage of 62 volts we measured 16 microamps from 1-3 FEA cells. No special activation is required either for initial turn-on or when taking the FEA out to air and back again to vacuum We believe this new FEA should be scalable and inexpensive for manufacturing low-cost FEDs. The chemistry, fabrication and emission characteristics will be discussed in this talk.