Practical nanoscale field emission devices for integrated circuits

Nanoscale field emission devices promise many advantages over traditional solid-state devices including fast switching speeds, extreme operating temperatures, and radiation hardness. Despite this, practical circuits have long been hampered by the extreme requirements of nanoscale field emitters. Devices have required vacuum packaging, or extremely sharp emission points that are difficult to reproduce, or cannot be integrated on a single wafer with independent gating. We demonstrate CMOS compatible, integratable two- and three-terminal devices operating at near atmospheric pressures with high single tip currents at low voltages that can be used as building blocks for future circuits.