The impact of Titanium nitride coating on emission characteristics in volcano-structured field emitter array

A volcano-structured field emitter array (FEA) enables high beam focusing due to the precisely arranged gate electrode. The volcano-structured FEA has been applied to low current operating device such as image sensor in our previous study. In order to apply the FEA to X-ray sources and high frequency vacuum tube, which require high current operation. In this study, we focused on TiN as a Si cone coating material to improve emission characteristics of the FEA. The TiN film was deposited by reactive sputtering using Ti target and Ar/N
2
gases. The TiN-coated Si-FEA operated at a relatively high current of 2 mA/1027 tips.