A Cascade Electron Source Based on Series Horizontal Tunneling Junctions

TL;DR

This paper proposes a cascade electron source using series horizontal tunneling junctions, achieving high emission efficiency, and demonstrates a three-junction device with 47.6% efficiency, offering a new approach for on-chip electron sources.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cascade electron source design based on series tunneling junctions and experimentally demonstrates high efficiency in a three-junction device.

Findings

Theoretical emission efficiency increases with the number of junctions.

Experimental device with three junctions achieves 47.6% efficiency.

The proposed design offers a new method for high-efficiency on-chip electron sources.

Abstract

On-chip electron sources have wide potential applications in miniature vacuum electronic devices and emission efficiency is one of their performance benchmarks. A cascade electron source based on series metal-insulator-metal horizontal tunneling junctions is proposed, where free electrons are additively extracted from each tunneling junction. A cascade electron source with n horizontal tunneling junctions shows a theoretical emission efficiency of approximately {\eta}(n)=1-(1-{\eta}_0 )^n, with {\eta}_0 being the efficiency of a single tunneling junction. Experimentally, a cascade electron source with three Si-SiOx-Si tunneling junctions is demonstrated, achieving an emission efficiency as high as 47.6%. This work provides a new way of realizing highly efficient on-chip electron sources.