1991/09/23 by Jun He, P. H. Cutler, N. M. Miskovsky · 3 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Chemistry · Mathematics · #Semiconductor materials and devices #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Graphene research and applications #Field electron emission #Conical surface #Planar #Common emitter #Field (mathematics) #Curvature #Quantum tunnelling #Electron #Atomic physics #Materials science #Geometry #Chemistry #Physics #Condensed matter physics #Quantum mechanics #Optoelectronics #Mathematics
paper · doi:10.1063/1.106257
openalex publication_date 1991/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Field emitter tips can now be fabricated with radii of curvature of the order of nm or even the size of a single atom. To include these geometric effects, we have calculated the field emission tunneling currents for hyperboloidal and conical free-electron tip models using geometry-dependent image interactions and bias fields. The numerical results can be fitted by an equation of the form J=AV2 exp(−B/V−C/V2), where A, B, and C are constants depending on material and geometric parameters. The calculated results, plotted as log J/V2 vs 1/V, do not exhibit the straight line behavior predicted by the Fowler–Nordheim model for field emission from a planar surface. Furthermore, the calculated current densities are dramatically enhanced for both the hyperboloidal (rt=10 nm) and conical (cone half-angle=70°) emitter models. In addition, field emission energy distributions for both models are significantly different from that of the Fowler–Nordheim planar model.