Copper nitride (Cu3N) thin film was deposited on silicon ( Si) substrate by reactive magnetron sputtering method. X-ray diffraction measurement showed that the film was composed of Cu3N crystallites with anti-ReO3 structure and exhibited preferential orientation of [1 0 0] direction. The field emission (FE) result showed that Cu3N film had a turn-on electric field of about 3 V/mu m at a current density of 1 mu A/cm(2) and a current density of 700 mu A/cm(2) was obtained at the electric field of 24 V/mu m. The emission mechanism inferred by Fowler-Nordheim (FN) plot is shown as following: thermal electron emission at low field region and tunneling electron emission at high field region. (C) 2008 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.