A NEW FABRICATION PROCESS OF FIELD EMITTER ARRAYS WITH SUBMICRON GATEAPERTURES USING LOCAL OXIDATION OF SILICON

The field emitter arrays with submicron gate apertures for low voltage operation have been successfully fabricated by modifying the conventi onal Spindt process, The key element of the new process is forming the gate insulator by local oxidation of silicon, resulting in the reduct ion of the gate hole size due to the lateral encroachment of oxide, Th e gate hole diameter of 0.55 mu m has been obtained from the original mask pattern size of 1.55 mu m. An anode current of 0.1 mu A per emitt er is measured at the gate voltage of about 53 V, while the gate curre nt is less than 0.3% of the anode current, To obtain the same current level from a Spindt-type emitter with the same gate hole diameter as t he mask pattern size, a gate bias of about 82 V is needed.