Large Area and High Resolution Field Emission Displays

The use of flat cathode ray tubes as information displays in aircraft cockpits offers critical advantages in terms of brightness, ruggedness, and viewing angle. Unfortunately, present field emission cathodes are strongly dependent on expensive submicron photolithographic processes while the unreliable irreproducible emitter operation has hindered large-scale acceptance of these displays. To remedy this problem we propose a novel approach for fabricating nanometer-sized emitter arrays without the need for many expensive semiconductor processing tools. Our proposed emitter design will provide very high emission site densities and excellent yields for field emission displays. Our approach to the fabrication of field emitter arrays is to use a naturally occurring structure as a host for the tip fabrication. This approach will allow us to prepare large-area, nanometer-sized structures with high aspect ratios, which are difficult to form by a conventional lithographic process. Our proposed naturally-confined metal field emitters will prove to be the best performing and most manufacturable electron sources for field emission displays. These novel field emitter array designs and manufacturing strategies offer the potential for successful introduction of radically new, low cost, self-emissive displays.