화학공학소재연구정보센터
Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, Vol.22, No.6, 2853-2859, 2004
Application of ion beam etching technique to the direct fabrication of silicon microtip arrays
A relatively simple and effective method to directly fabricate large-area field emission microtip arrays on n-type silicon wafers is proposed. The presented fabrication approach of silicon microtip devices 'mainly involves photolithography, thermal.shaping and consolidation. argon ion beam etching and sputtering deposition. The measurements show that the silicon field emission microtip devices fabricated have good structural uniformity and electrical characteristics. The center- to-center spacing of rnicrotips fabricated is 50 urn and the typical microtip height about 11 mum. The scanning electron microscope analysis and the surface style measurements are carried out for the surface morphologies of silicon rnicrotips, such as square-bottom pyramid-shaped microtips, cone-shaped microtips, square-bottom circle-microtips. and circle-bottom circle-microtips. Electrical measurements are performed to obtain the typical field emission properties of the devices. The experiment results show that the method utilized can be applied to fabricate silicon field emission microtip arrays and circle-microtip arrays of larger area. (C) 2004 American Vacuum Society.