field electron emission

Field electron emission has a long, complicated and messy history.

His work included field electron emission and photoemission studies of surfaces.

Field electron emission, which tends to reduce the negative potential, can be important due to the small size of the particles.

Another mechanism to generate free electrons from a cold metallic surface is field electron emission.

More than any other scientist, he was responsible for the identification of (presently named) field electron emission as a separate physical effect.

In some respects, field electron emission is a paradigm example of what physicists mean by tunneling.

The next part of this article deals with the basic theory of cold field electron emission from bulk metals.

(For very large applied voltages also field electron emission can occur.)

The field electron emission effect causes a current to flow, as electrons tunnel across the gap between the tube and the second electrode.

Randomly oriented nanobuds have already been demonstrated to have an extremely low work function for field electron emission.

Cathodes used for field electron emission in vacuum tubes are called cold cathodes.

As already indicated, it is now thought that the earliest manifestations of field electron emission were the electrical discharges it caused.

Procedures were (and are) used to round and smooth the surfaces of electrodes that might generate unwanted field electron emission currents.

Lilienfeld was responsible for the first reliable account in English of the experimental phenomenology of field electron emission, in 1922.

Equations for cold field electron emission (CFE)

Another name for the cathode in vacuum tube technology which emits electrons through thermionic emission or field electron emission.

As already indicated, the early experimental work on field electron emission (1910-1920) was driven by Lilienfeld's desire to develop miniaturized X-ray tubes for medical applications.

Electron beams can be generated by thermionic emission, field electron emission or the anodic arc method.

These regions may be initiated by field electron emission, but are then sustained by localized thermionic emission once a vacuum arc forms.

Quantum tunnelling was later applied to other situations, such as the field electron emission of electrons, and perhaps most importantly semiconductor and superconductor physics.

As noted at the beginning, the effects of the atomic structure of materials are disregarded in the relatively simple treatments of field electron emission discussed here.

Cold cathodes rely on field electron emission or secondary electron emission from positive ion bombardment and do not require heating.

The development of "simple" theories of field electron emission, and in particular the development of Fowler-Nordheim-type equations, relies on all five of the above factors being true.

An important contribution, with the British physicist Fowler in 1928, was to establish the correct physical explanation of the physical phenomenon now called field electron emission (FE).

Improved methods include creating an electron emitter, such as a thermionic cathode, plasma cathode, plasma contactor, or field electron emission device.