Field emission of silicon nanowires: conditioning and stability

We report the low-pressure chemical vapor deposition growth and field emission characterization of silicon nanowires SiNWs . Our field emission results show the importance of the so called conditioning process on the reproducibility of the emission performance itself; this effect has proven to be reversible for the investigated current regime. We explained this behavior by invoking a current-driven desorption of residual adsorbed gases. A highly reproducible turn-on electric field of 27 V/ m is found for a diode-connected SiNW planar sample. Furthermore, stability analysis is performed showing the technologically promising field emission behavior of the samples