Modeling of field emission from nanowires

This work presents a procedure for calculating field emission from conducting nanofibers based on an electrostatic continuum model. A perfectly conducting nanofiber with finite length in the presence of a static electric field is considered. An analytic expression is obtained for the resultant electrostatic potential by employing the slender body approximation. The total external potential is used in conjunction with the one-dimensional WKB approximation to estimate the tunneling probability of the electrons in the fiber due the total external field. Unlike the standard Fowler-Nordheim method, the current density of the field emission is obtained by using quantum wire density of states for room temperature. Results are compared with results from the Fowler-Nordheim method for Ni nanofibers as well as with recent experimental results.