TY - CHAP A1 - Serbun, Pavel A1 - Porshyn, V. A1 - Müller, Günter A1 - Mingels, S. A1 - Lützenkirchen-Hecht, Dirk A1 - Bachmann, Michael A1 - Düsberg, Felix A1 - Dams, Florian A1 - Hofmann, Martin A1 - Pahlke, Andreas A1 - Prommesberger, Christian A1 - Langer, Christoph A1 - Ławrowski, Robert Damian A1 - Schreiner, Rupert T1 - Field emission behavior of Au-tip-coated p-type Si pillar structures T2 - 29th International Vacuum Nanoelectronics Conference (IVNC), 2016, 11-15 July, Vancouver, BC, Canada N2 - Precisely aligned high-aspect-ratio (HAR) silicon tip arrays were fabricated using enhanced reactive ion etching with an inductively-coupled-plasma followed by a sharpening oxidation. A gold thin film was then sputtered only on the tips of the HAR structures. Field-emission (FE) properties from Au-coated HAR p-Si tip array cathodes have been systematically investigated by means of field emission scanning microscopy (FESM). A rather high efficiency of the HAR Si structures (71% at 550 V), but limited homogeneous FE with currents of 1-600 nA might be correlated with the varying geometry of the tips and the presence of oxides. I-V measurements of single Au-coated HAR emitters revealed activation effects and the saturation current region at 3 nA. An increase of the saturation current by 4 orders of magnitude was observed during 20 hours of conditioning at constant voltage, which finally resulted in nearly reproducible FN curves with a ß-factor of 473. An excellent stability of the emission current of less than 1 % was obtained during the additional long-time conditioning at constant voltage. Optical switching under halogen lamp illumination resulted in at least 2 times higher saturation currents and showed a linear dependence of the FE current on the light color temperature. KW - field emission KW - p-type Si-pillar array KW - surface oxide effects KW - photoemission Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/IVNC.2016.7551516 SN - 2380-6311 SP - 181 EP - 182 PB - IEEE ER -