Cold Cathode Design for Miniature Traveling Wave Tube Amplifiers (Miniature Traveling Wave Tubes for Space Application)

"The integration of carbon nanotubes (CN), which have low-power and high-current density electron emission properties, into a MEMS-scale microwave source, represents a first step to achieve the desired goal of power output in the watts range and frequencygreater than 100 GHz. MBI proposes to develop an enabling technology to produce a MEMS microwave source based on a MBI CN cold cathode array. By implementing the following steps based on the cold cathode electron source concept, MBI plans to achieve byPhase II the frequency and power specifications required:(1) Modify several existing MEMS designs to study the feasibility of achieving the power and frequency specifications of solicitation AF020-030.(2) Synthesize CN, test the current emission, and adjust the growth parameters of CN cold cathodes for this application requirement.(3) Begin preliminary CN substrate integration experiments in candidate microwave source subcomponents.In collaboration with experts in this field, initial studies will be performed on various microwave tube amplifier designs that can utilize MBI's cold cathode as well as stacked bonding technology to lead to a Phase II deliverable of a compact, W-bandmicrowave amplifier with minimal power requirements. MBI will be collaborating with existing working microwave tube designs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (nanoklystron) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Klystrino). MBI, was founded tocommercializ