Low-temperature chemical vapor deposition processes were studied for coating carbon films on metal-coated glass plates. Thermal CVD in hydrocarbon mixtures was used for carbon deposition at temperatures between 300°C and 550°C. Carbon deposited on metal coated glass plates were examined by SEM and analyzed using a pin to disk setup in an ultra high vacuum chamber for measuring the electron emission characteristics. Using a one-millimeter diameter tungsten rod with a hemispherical tip as the anode while the carbon coatings as the cathode, current-voltage characteristics of the carbon coatings were measured and used for calculating the electric field at which electron emission started as well as calculating the field enhancement factor of the carbon coatings. Field emission of electrons from carbon coatings starting from an electric field as low as 1.4 volts per micrometer has been achieved.

In order to investigate the effect of microstructure on the brightness of thin film phosphors for field emission displays, Y2O3:Eu thin film phosphors were prepared using pulsed laser deposition. To deconvolute the effects experimentally, the Y2O3:Eu films of controlled thickness and microstructure were prepared on various substrate materials such as amorphous quartz, (0001) sapphire, (100) lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3), and (100) silicon wafers. Cathodoluminescent brightness and efficiency of the films were obtained in both transmission and reflection modes. The Y2O3:Eu films deposited on the quartz substrates showed the maximum brightness followed by the films on (0001) sapphire, (100) lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3), and (100) silicon substrates. The role of interface scattering of the emitted light on the film brightness will be discussed together with changing surface roughness and film thickness.

There is a growing interest in the application of large area electronics on curved surfaces. One approach towards realizing this goal is to fabricate circuits on planar substrates of thin plastic or metal foil, which are subsequently deformed into arbitrary shapes. The problem that we consider here is the deformation of substrates into a spherical shape, where the strain is determined by geometry and cannot be reduced by simply using a thinner substrate. The goal is to achieve permanent, plastic deformation in the substrates, without exceeding fracture or buckling limits in the device materials.

Our experiments consist of the planar fabrication of amorphous silicon device structures onto stainless steel or Kapton® polyimide substrates, followed by permanent deformation into a spherical shape. We will present empirical experiments showing the dependence of the results on the island/line size of the device materials and the deformation temperature. We have successfully deformed Kapton® polyimide substrates with 100 [.proportional]m wide amorphous silicon islands into a one steradian spherical cap, which subtends 66 degrees, without degradation of the silicon. This work demonstrates the feasibility of building semiconductor devices on plastically deformed substrates despite a 5% average biaxial strain in the substrate after deformation.

We investigated electron field emission (FE) from heavily Si-doped AlN grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. We found that, as the Si-dopant density increases, the threshold electric field decreases, which indicates that electrons are supplied to the surface effectively as a result of Si doping. We show that heavily Si-doped AlN has a maximum FE current of 347 μA (the maximum current density of 11 mA/cm2), stable FE current (fluctuation: 3%), and a threshold electric field of 34 V/μm. We observed visible light emission (luminance: about 1200 cd/m2) from phosphors excited by the field-emitted electrons.

Novel heterostructured cold cathodes made of nanoseeded diamond and cathodic arc process grown nanocluster carbon films, were studied. The nanocrystalline diamond with varying diamond concentration was first coated on to the substrate. The nanocluster carbon films were then deposited on the nanoseeded diamond coated substrates using the cathodic arc process at room temperature. The resultant heterostructured microcathodes were observed to exhibit electron emission currents of 1μA/cm2 at low fields of 1.2 - 5 V/μm. Further some of the samples seem to exhibit I-V characteristics with a negative differential resistance region at room temperature conditions. This negative differential resistance or the resonant tunneling behaviour was observed to be dependent on the nanoseeded diamond concentration.

There is interest in reducing the shot number in the poly-Si laser crystallisation process in order to improve its throughput. Two distinct shot number dependent effects have been identified, which are both laser intensity dependent. The critical laser energy density is that which causes full film melt-through, and the major issue occurs at energies greater than this, where there is a considerable degradation in device uniformity with reducing shot number. The cause of this is non-uniform recovery of the full-melt-through fine grain poly-Si, and it is demonstrated that by extending the trailing edge of the beam, the material uniformity at reduced shot number can be improved. For energies less than this, the issue is not so much uniformity, as a general degradation in overall device properties with reducing shot number, which has been correlated with reducing grain size.

In more demanding, future applications (such as system-on-panel), it will be necessary to improve circuit performance and approach that of current MOSFET devices. This will require short channel, self-aligned (SA) TFTs, and some of the issues with this architecture, particularly lateral ion implantation damage beneath the gate edge and drain field relief are discussed.

When a high-velocity (i.e., typically > 0.1 MeV/amu) ion passes through a material it can change the properties of the material within a cylindrical zone centered on the essentially straight trajectory of the ion. The electronic bonding, phase, and density are among the properties modified in the zone, which is called a latent nuclear, or ion, track. Because the diameters of latent ion tracks are typically less than 20 nm, selective chemical etching is generally employed to improve the detection and assessment of the tracks. Historically, etched nuclear tracks have been used mainly for nuclear particle identification, geochronology, measurement of extremely low-dose radiation levels, and creation of membrane filters.

We prepared a viscous Ni solution by dissolving NiCl2 in 1N HCl and mixing it with propylene glycol to control the amount of Ni on Si surface. A uniform film was formed after spin coating and oven dry. The a-Si films deposited by LPCVD with Si2H6 gas were crystallized more uniformly and more reproducibly. And the crystallization was enhanced from 600°C, 30h to 500°C, 10h. The surface roughness of poly-Si film crystallized with the viscous solution was much smaller than that of poly-Si film crystallized from Ni/Si direct contact. The TFT mobility was improved even though the crystallization temperature was much lower.

The relatively poor efficiency of phosphor materials in cathodoluminescence with low accelerating voltages is a major concern in the design of field emission flat panel displays operated below 5 kV. Our research on rare-earth-activated phosphors indicates that mechanisms involving interactions of excited activators have a significant impact on phosphor efficiency. Persistence measurements in photoluminescence (PL) and cathodoluminescence (CL) show significant deviations from the sequential relaxation model. This model assumes that higher excited manifolds in an activator de-excite primarily by phonon-mediated sequential relaxation to lower energy manifolds in the same activator ion. In addition to sequential relaxation, there appears to be strong coupling between activators, which results in energy transfer interactions. Some of these interactions negatively impact phosphor efficiency by nonradiatively de-exciting activators. Increasing activator concentration enhances these interactions. The net effect is a significant degradation in phosphor efficiency at useful activator concentrations, which is exaggerated when low–energy electron beams are used to excite the emission.

We have proposed and fabricated a new poly-Si TFT that employs selectively doped regions between the source and drain in order to reduce leakage current without the sacrifice of the on current. In the proposed poly-Si TFTs, the selectively doped regions where doping concentration is identical to that of source/drain, reduce the effective channel length during the on state. Under the off state, the selectively doped regions may reduce the lateral electric field induced in the depletion region near drain so that the leakage current reduces considerably. The experimental data of the proposed TFT shows that it has the high on-current, low leakage current and low threshold voltage when compared with conventional TFT. The fabrication steps for the proposed TFT are reduced because ion-implantation for source/drain and selectively doped regions is performed simultaneously prior to an excimer laser irradiation. It should be noted that, in the proposed TFT, only one excimer laser annealing is required while two excimer laser annealing steps are required in conventional TFT.

Vacuum packaging is a very important issue for vacuum microelectronics devices, especially for field emission displays. Emission current from the field emitter array (FEA), however, is known to decrease significantly after the vacuum packaging process. The current decrease is caused by heating treatment in the vacuum sealing process. In the present paper, the effect of the heating treatment on Si FEA was investigated and CHF3 plasma treatment was proposed for avoiding the problem. The Si FEA was exposed to plasma for 15sec and emission characteristics were measured before and after the vacuum sealing process using frit. It was confirmed that CHF3 plasma treatment was very effective for avoiding the emission degradation of the Si FEA. Details of the heating damage and CHF3 plasma treatment are described.

A simple low-temperature excimer-laser doping process employing phosphosilicate glass (PSG) and borosilicate glass (BSG) films as dopant sources is proposed in order to form source and drain regions for polycrystalline silicon thin film transistors (poly-Si TFTs). We have successfully controlled sheet resistance and dopant depth profile of doped poly-Si films by varying PH3/SiH4 flow ratio, laser energy density and the number of laser pulses. The penetration depth and the surface concentration of dopants were increased with increasing laser energy density and the number of laser pulses. The minimum sheet resistance of 450ω/ for phosphorus (P) doping and 1100ω/ for boron (B) doping were successfully obtained. Our experimental results show that the proposed laser-doping process is suitable for source/drain formation of poly-Si TFTs.

The field emission properties of hydrogenated amorphous carbon containing up to 29at% nitrogen (a-C:N:H), grown in an integrated distributed electron cyclotron resonance (IDECR) reactor were studied using a sphere-plane geometry. All films were smooth in character and required a high field (20-70V/νm) activation process before emission, which created micron- sized craters in the emission region. Further analysis suggested that the emission originates from activation-created geometrically enhanced areas around the crater region. Upon low-level nitrogen incorporation (N/N+C≤0.2), the field required for activation decreased from 54V/νm to a minimum value of 20V/νm. The turn-on field required for 1νA of current also decreased, reaching a minimum of 11.3V/νm. The decrease in activation and turn-on field was related to the increase in conductivity observed with increasing nitrogen content. At higher nitrogen concentrations, the increase in activation energy and turn on field for emission may be due to changes in overall material structure, as indicated by the decreasing optical gap

Arrays and single-tip p-type silicon micro-emitters have been formed using a subtractive tip fabrication technique. Following fabrication, several different surface treatments have been attempted for comparison. We utilized ion and electron bombardment at elevated pressures (with interrupted pumping), and also hydrogen seasoning during field emission operation. The objectives of these treatments include stabilization of the emission, lowering the effective workfunction, and reducing low-frequency noise. The tips were evaluated using I-V measurements in the diode configuration. A flat Si anode, spaced nominally 6 μm and 150 μm from the cathode, was used. For the purpose of treatment, the field emission characteristics are measured in a high vacuum chamber at a pressure range between 10−5 and 10−8 Torr. The results suggest that the emitters benefit from seasoning or conditioning, for optimal performance, low noise, minimum work function and maximum reproducibility and reliability over the lifetime of the cathode.

We prepared Si emitters coated with an MOCVD CoSi2 layer to improve the emission properties. The CoSi2 layer was grown in situ by reactive chemical vapor deposition of cyclopentadienyl dicarbonyl cobalt at 650 °C. The CoSi2 layer was conformally coated on the Si emitter tips and had a twinned structure at the epitaxial CoSi2/Si interface. The CoSi2-coated Si emitters showed an enhanced emission due to the increase of the number of emitting site from Fowler-Nordheim plot. The fluctuation of emission current was reduced by CoSi2 coating. But the long-term stability was not much improved.

In this paper, we report on the average linear density of sub-grain boundaries that are found in directionally solidified microstructures obtained via sequential lateral solidification of Si thin films. Specifically, we have characterized the dependence of the sub-grain boundary density on the film thickness, incident energy density, and per-pulse translation distance. The investigation was confined to analyzing directionally solidified microstructures obtained using straight-line beamlets. It is found that the average spacing of the sub-grain boundaries depended approximately linearly on the film thickness, where it varied from 0.28m at a thickeness of 550Å to ∼0.75μm at 2,000 Å. In contrast, variations in either the energy density or the per-pulse translation distance within the investigated SLS process parameter domain were found to have a negligible effect on the spacing. Discussion is provided on a preliminary model that invokes polygonization of thermal-stress generated dislocations, and on implications of the dependence of device performance on the film thickness.

A new structure of triode type field emission displays based on single-walled carbon nanotube emitters is demonstrated. In this structure, gate electrodes are situated under cathode electrodes with an in-between insulating layer, so called under-gate type triode. Electron emission from the carbon nanotube emitters is modulated by changing gate voltages. A threshold voltage is approximately 70 V at the anode bias of 275 V.

Secondary electron emission from a cathode material in AC PDP (Plasma Display Panel) is dominated by potential emission mechanism, which is sensitive to band structure of a protective layer. Therefore, the secondary electron emission property can be modified by a change in the energy band structure of the protective layer. Mg2-2xTixO2 films were prepared by e-beam evaporation method to be used as possible substitutes for the conventional MgO protective layer. The oxygen content in the films and in turn, the ratio of metal to oxygen gradually increased with the increasing TiO2 content in the starting materials. The pure MgO films exhibited the crystallinity with strong (111) orientation. The Mg2-2xTixO2 films, however, had the crystallinity with (311) preferred orientation. The stress relaxation, when the [TiO2/(MgO+TiO2)] ratio in the evaporation starting materials was 0.15, seems to be related to inhomogeneous film surface due to an excessive addition of TiO2 to MgO. When the [TiO2/(MgO+TiO2)] ratios of 0.1 and 0.15 were used, the deposited films exhibited the secondary electron emission yields improved by 50% compared to that of the conventional MgO protective layer, which resulted in reduction in discharge voltage by 12%.

Replacing hollow and filament cathodes with field emitter (FE) cathodes could significantly improve the scalability, power, and performance of some meso- and microscale Electric Propulsion (EP) systems. The propulsion system environments and requirements and the challenges in integrating these technologies are discussed to justify the recommended cathode configurations. Required cathode technologies include low work function coatings on Si or Mo Field Emitter Array (FEA) cathodes with arc protection and electrostatic ion filters.

We have developed a new type of a thin-film electroluminescence (TFEL) device with nano- structured (NS)-ZnS:Mn utilizing its enhanced luminescent efficiency due to the quantum confinement (QC) effects. As NS-ZnS:Mn, ZnS:Mn/Si3N4 multilayers with thicknesses of 1.9–3.5 nm for ZnS were prepared by a rf-magnetron sputtering method. From the results of grazing incidence X-ray reflectometry and X-ray diffractmetry, formation of ZnS:Mn nanocrystals in the ZnS layers are confirmed. With a decrease in the ZnS:Mn layer thickness, the photoluminescence (PL) efficiency associated with the Mn2+ transitions is increased, and the PL excitation spectrum is shifted toward higher energies, indicating appearance of the QC effects. As the results of the application of NS-ZnS:Mn to the emission layer of the TFEL device, we have successfully observed reddish-orange emission above the threshold voltage of 12 V0-p, and the maximum luminance is 3.0 cd/m2 operated with the 1-kHz sinusoidal voltage of 20 V0-p.