TY - JOUR A1 - Buchner, Philipp A1 - Hausladen, Matthias A1 - Bartl, Mathias A1 - Bachmann, Michael A1 - Schreiner, Rupert T1 - High current field emission from Si nanowires on pillar structures JF - Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B: Nanotechnology and Microelectronics N2 - We investigate the influence of the geometry and doping level on the performance of n-type silicon nanowire field emitters on silicon pillar structures. Therefore, multiple cathodes with 50 by 50 pillar arrays (diameter: 5 μm, height: 30 μm, spacing: 50 μm) were fabricated and measured in diode configuration. In the first experiment, we compared two geometry types using the same material. Geometry 1 is black silicon, which is a highly dense surface covering a forest of tightly spaced silicon needles resulting from self-masking during a plasma etching process of single crystal silicon. Geometry 2 are silicon nanowires, which are individual spaced-out nanowires in a crownlike shape resulting from a plasma etching process of single crystal silicon. In the second experiment, we compared two different silicon doping levels [n-type (P), 1–10 and <0.005 Ω cm] for the same geometry. The best performance was achieved with lower doped silicon nanowire samples, emitting 2 mA at an extraction voltage of 1 kV. The geometry/material combination with the best performance was used to assemble an integrated electron source. These electron sources were measured in a triode configuration and reached onset voltages of about 125 V and emission currents of 2.5 mA at extraction voltages of 400 V, while achieving electron transmission rates as high as 85.0%. KW - Doping KW - Electron sources KW - Nanowires KW - Plasma processing KW - Field emitter arrays KW - Triodes KW - Semiconductors Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0003384 SN - 2166-2754 VL - 42 IS - 2 PB - AIP ER -