Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, Vol.20, No.1, 203-208, 2002
Low turn-on voltage Mo-polycide field emitter arrays applied to field emission flat panel display
As an attempt to develop field emission flat panel displays, gated Mo-polycide field emitter arrays (FEAs) have been designed and successfully fabricated. The field emission display (FED) using these FEAs eliminates the difficulty of achieving well-to-well isolation that is considered as one of the most serious problems of silicon-based FED. The fabricated Mo-polycide FEAs were applied to a 0.7 in. diagonal monochrome FED composed of 25 x 25 pixels. Each pixel consists of 25 x 25 tips. At an anode voltage of 200 V dc and a gate voltage of 60 V with duty of 1/3, the anode current of several hundred nanoamperes per pixel was obtained from vacuum-sealed Mo-polycide FEAs. Emission tests in various vacuum environments revealed that the electron emission was reduced as the vacuum was degraded and estimated vacuum inside panel was 1.0 x 10(-6), 1.2 x 10(-5), and 2.9 x 10(-6) Torr at pre-seal-off, post-seal-off, and after getter activation, respectively. Alphabetical characters can be displayed on the FED panel using driver circuits which are able to drive 640 x 480 pixels. The produced images have demonstrated a luminance of up to 70 cd/m(2) at an anode voltage of 200 V and were degraded over time. The degradation of the luminescence seemed to be related with the Coulombic aging and burn-in of the phosphor, which could be indirectly confirmed from the microscopic picture of the FED phosphor screen showing bum-in of the phosphor which was observed on the spots with special brightness.