The Effect of Temperature on Field Emission Current

Abstract

In this paper, we present our recent works on the measurement of field emission performance of silicon tip arrays and investigate the thermal instability of emission current by measuring the emission current as the function of time under three different cooling conditions—natural free radiation，contact conduction and air forced convection respectively. Draw the conclusions that field emission performance of the silicon-based emitters is quite sensitive to the temperature change and resistive heating produced as emission current flowing through the apex of silicon emitters induces the instability of emission current.