Field Emission from Oxide Nanowires: Mechanism and Applications

In this invited talk, our recent progresses in the research of field emission from several oxide nanowires and their applications in vacuum microelectronic devices will be reviewed. Field emission properties from of CuO, WO
_3-x
and ZnO nanowires were studied and their field emission mechanism were discussed. Applications of nanowire field emitter in gated field emitter, flat panel x-ray source and imaging detector were explored. Prototype of flat panel X-ray source using ZnO nanowire field emitters was fabricated and its high resolution imaging capability was demonstrated. The feasibility of a large area high-sensitive detector using ZnO nanowire field emitters is also verified.