Piezoelectric surface barrier lowering applied to InGaN/GaN field emitter arrays

A method of lowering the surface barrier for field emission by using the piezoelectric effect is presented. The piezoelectric effect produces a surface dipole that decreases the surface barrier, which in turn decreases the turn-on voltage of the field emitter. Calculations show that significant reduction of the tunneling barrier can be effected with relatively thin layers of strained InGaN on GaN field emitter arrays. Dramatic reduction of the turn-on voltage from 450 V (GaN field emitter array) to 70 V (InGaN/GaN field emitter array) was observed and can be attributed partly to surface barrier lowering. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.