Fabrication of diamondlike carbon-coated field emitter triode using aluminum parting layer

Coating silicon field emitter tips with a thin film of diamondlike carbon (DLC) seems to be a promising way to improve the performance of the silicon emitter tips. If one deposits a DLC film directly onto the gated silicon emitter, DLC will contaminate the side wall of the insulating layer, which can cause a large leakage current to the gate. To prevent the contamination of the side wall, we deposited an aluminum sacrificial layer before coating the DLC film. The gate current measured from the DLC-coated emitters using the sacrificial layer was less than 3% of the anode current. (C) 1998 American Vacuum Society.