NEW HIGH-INTENSITY POINT ELECTRON
SOURCE
V. E. Ptitsin
Institute for Analytical Instrumentation RAS, Saint-Petersburg
The paper presents a new physical technology
to produce self-assembled nanoheterostructures formed in thin (~5-10 nm)
(ZrO2) dielectric layers at the surface of
pointed W<100> microcrystals. The studies of thermally activated electron
emission from the ZrO2--vacuum interface into
vacuum under electrostatic field have shown that the electron emission behavior
does not agree with the thermal field emission theory. The phenomenon studied
was called the abnormal thermal field emission. It has been found that the
normalized brightness and angular intensity of emission from the nanoheterostructure
surface are two orders of magnitude higher than those of ZrO/W<100>
Schottky cathodes. A phenomenological model for the mechanism of thermal
field emission is offered.