Investigation on fabrication of Si-TaSi₂ field emitter arrays

Si-TaSi₂ eutectic in situ composite has been regarded as one of the promising field emission materials due to relatively low work function, good electricity conductivity and three-dimensional array of Schottky junctions grown in the composite spontaneously. The Si-TaSi₂ field emitter arrays were fabricated according to the selective corrosion theory. Moreover, the two important factors i.e. corrosion time and ingredient of the corrosive which affected corrosion process most were systematically investigated. It was found that the curvature radius re was decreased and the height and aspect ratio h/rc of the TaSi₂ fibers were increased with the increase of the corrosion time. The optimal ingredient of the corrosive was v(HNO₃) : v(HF) = 4 : 1, and the optimal corrosion time was about 20-30 min. A transparent anode technique was adopted to study the field emission property of the Si-TaSi₂ eutectic in situ composites. It was found that this material has better field emission properties.