FABRICATION OF DIAMOND-LIKE CARBON-COATED FIELD EMITTER TRIODE USING ALUMINUM PARTING LAYER

Coating silicon field emitter tips with a thin film of diamondlike car bon (DLC) seems to be a promising way to improve the performance of th e silicon emitter tips. If one deposits a DLC film directly onto the g ated silicon emitter, DLC will contaminate the side wall of the insula ting layer, which can cause a large leakage current to the gate. To pr event the contamination of the side wall, we deposited an aluminum sac rificial 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.