RESONANT FOWLER-NORDHEIM TUNNELING EMISSION FROM METAL-OXIDE-SEMICONDUCTOR CATHODES

A metal-oxide-semiconductor tunneling cathode was fabricated with an u ltrathin oxide layer and an abrupt interface between the oxide layer a nd the polycrystalline Si gate electrode. The emission current shows p eriodic deviations on the Fowler-Nordheim plot estimated by the Wentze l-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation. The peaks in the oscillations are confirmed to arise from the resonant effect of electron tunneling by comparing the experimental results with the theoretical calculatio ns. This article describes the first experiment of resonant tunneling emission. (C) 1998 American Vacuum Society. [S0734-211X(98)02502-5].