Enhanced Field Emission from Metallic Surfaces and Nanowires

Suppressing field emission from metallic surfaces is always of high demand for getting the optimum performance of high-voltage vacuum devices. While on the other hand, electron field emission from nanostructures has attracted wide attention in vacuum micro/nano-electronics. This book describes both these aspects. The first part contains the effects of surface preparation and cleaning techniques on Nb and Cu, the effectiveness of dry ice cleaning technique to remove field emitters and interesting results on high purity crystalline Nb samples e.g. onset of FE at high fields (120-200 MV/m), grain-boundary assisted emission and intrinsic FE measurements. Finally, a useful correlation between sizes of emitters and their onset fields has been found. In the next section on Cu, Ni and Au nanowires deposited electrochemically in to the pores of etched ion-track membrane, the high emitter number density up to 105/cm2 at 6 V/ m and emission behaviour of the individual emitters up to 100 ?A with controlled field enhancement factor are reported.