Silicon field emitter arrays (Si FEAs) are being explored as an electron source for vacuum channel transistors for high temperature electronics. Arrays of 1000 × 1000 silicon tip based gated field emitters were studied by measuring their electrical characteristics up to 40 V of DC gate bias with a 1.3 mA emission current at different temperatures from 25 to 400 °C. At ∼350 °C, residual gas analyzer measurements show that water desorption and carbon dioxide partial pressures increase significantly, the gate to emitter leakage current decreases by more than ten times, and the collector current increases by more than ten times. These improvements remained after heat-treatment but were then lost once the device was exposed to the atmosphere for several days. The improvements could be recovered upon additional baking suggesting that adsorbates (primarily water) on the surface affected field emission and surface leakage. It was also found that after heat-treatment, the electrical characteristics of the devices exhibited <3% variation in collector current at 40 V, which (without exposure to the atmosphere) can be termed as a weak temperature dependence. These results suggest that Si FEAs could be viable as a high temperature transistor.

中文翻译：

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温度对门控硅场发射阵列性能的影响

硅场发射器阵列（Si FEA）被用作高温电子设备真空通道晶体管的电子源。通过在25至400°C的不同温度下，以1.3 mA的发射电流测量高达40 V的DC栅极偏置电压，研究了1000×1000的基于硅尖端的门控场致发射器阵列。在约350°C时，残留气体分析仪的测量结果表明，水的脱附和二氧化碳分压显着增加，从栅极到发射极的泄漏电流减少了十倍以上，而集电极电流增加了十倍以上。这些改进在热处理后仍然存在，但是一旦设备暴露在大气中几天后就消失了。可以通过额外烘烤来恢复改善，这表明表面上的吸附物（主要是水）会影响场发射和表面泄漏。还发现，在热处理后，器件的电气特性在40 V时集电极电流表现出<3％的变化，这种变化（不暴露于大气中）可被称为对温度的弱依赖性。这些结果表明，Si FEA可以用作高温晶体管。