A Spindt tip is a tiny conical tip microfabricated on a substrate, which emits electrons by field emission. Field emission (FE is the emission of electrons from the surface of a condensed phase into another phase due to the presence of high electric fields It is named after its inventor Charles A. Spindt who developed this technology at SRI International. SRI International, based in the United States is one of the world's largest contract Research institutes.
Because of its small size (micrometer scale, now down to nanometer scale), the tip creates a high electric field with a relatively low voltage. With microelectronics technology, it is possible to pack a high number of such tips on a substrate, thereby increasing the number of electrons generated.
One of the earliest article describing a single emitter tip microfabricated on a wafer dates back to 1968[1]. Spindt, Shoulders and Heynick filed a U. S. Patent [2] in 1970 for a vacuum device comprising an array of emitter tips.
This electron-emitting apparatus, commonly known as field emitter array, finds applications in electronics, particularly in a flat panel display technology called Field emission displays. A vacuum electronics device made of a substrate on which small "Spindt tips" are microfabricated A field emission display ( FED) is a Flat panel display technology based on field emitting cathodes to bombard Phosphor coatings as the light emissive
References
- ^ C. A. Spindt, "A thin-film field-emission cathode", Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 39, no. 7, pages 3504-3505, 1968
- ^ U. S. Patent 3,755,704 granted on August 28, 1973
Patents
See also
This article is about the electronic device not an evacuated pipe used for experiments in Free-fall. A vacuum electronics device made of a substrate on which small "Spindt tips" are microfabricated A field emission display ( FED) is a Flat panel display technology based on field emitting cathodes to bombard Phosphor coatings as the light emissiveDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic