Fabrication of sharp silicon tips employing anisotropic wet etching and reactive ion etching

We developed a process to obtain sharper silicon tips by employing anisotropic etching in a KOH solution followed by SF6 plasma etch. The tips were further sharpened using the established thermal oxidation technique to decrease the cone angle and, therefore, obtain smaller curvature radii. We have analyzed the impact of such changes in geometry on a figure of merit associated with the field emission characteristics. An increase in the figure of merit by a factor of three was found in relation to the tips before sharpening. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.