ISSN 1002-1027　　CN 11-2952/G2

### Field Emission Properties of a Tungsten Tip after Discharge Treatment

TAO Xiong, ZHANG Zhaoxiang, WANG Mingsheng, WU Yue, ZHANG Gengmin

1. Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Department of Electronics, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871
• Received:2005-05-10 Online:2006-05-20 Published:2006-05-20

Abstract: A tungsten tip received discharge treatment under a high voltage over 10kV in a field-emission microscope (FEM). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation showed that some nanometer-scale protrusions resulted from the discharge treatment. The post-treatment tungsten tip delivered a field emission current as high as 1.55mA. The FEM pattern of the tip demonstrated a four-fold symmetry and thus the field emission was attributed to a single protrusion. The dependence of the field emission current on the applied voltage approximately followed the Fowler-Nordheim (F-N) theory. The value of the emission area calculated by the F-N theory is in agreement with that obtained from the TEM observation in the order of magnitude.