Curvature correction to the field emission current

Debabrata Biswas; Rajasree Ramachandran

doi:10.1116/1.5064403

paper

Curvature correction to the field emission current

arXiv:1807.11265 · doi:10.1116/1.5064403

Abstract

The curvature of field emitter tips leads to an altered tunneling potential that assumes significance when the radius of curvature is small. We provide here an analytical curvature-corrected formula for the field emission current from smooth vertically aligned emitter tips and test its applicability across a range of apex radius, $R_{a}$ , and local electric field, $E_{a}$ . It is found to give excellent results for $R_{a} > 10$ nm with errors generally less than $10%$ . Surprisingly, for the uncorrected potential, we find the errors to be high even at $R_{a} = 100$ nm ( $> 35%$ at $E_{a} = 3$ V/nm) and conclude that curvature correction is essential for apex radius less than a micron.

7 pages